


Open Your Eyes

by honooko



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-10-28 20:06:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 44,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honooko/pseuds/honooko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a cyberpunk dystopian future, Tokyo has been taken over by the all-powerful Ment. In the fringes of the city lives a resistance of the children of the times past, and those who ran away from a frightening future. Can they survive in a world so determined to destroy them? And if they do survive, at what cost?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would not be without several people: Paris, my dear cousin, who talked me into trying a genre I never would have thought of without her. Aya, who reminded me this fic existed every time I let it lax for too long. Circe, for encouraging me to keep writing things she liked, and Erica, who always commented that she wanted more. And for everyone that's left comments telling me they love this world I'm building: thank you. This series would not be the monster it's become without you.

Nino crouched with his ear pressed to the cold steel, turning the knob smoothly until he felt a tiny twitch, a minute click, under his fingers. Grinning, he pulled out the inner panel as soon as the safe door popped open. 47 keys, 5 keys per key-code, 235 possible combinations. The task would be impossible to finish in under three minutes for anyone else; but Nino wasn’t the best at this for nothing.

The target was a middle-aged man with a daughter he doted on. Her name was Karen. Assigning numbers to the letters in Roman characters, you’d get…

11, 1, 18, 5, 14.

The panel hissed softly in his hands, and he removed the lump of paper inside gingerly, tucking it into the hidden pocket of his vest, zipping it up to his throat. Just a short beat later and the safe was back in the state it had been in before he’d gotten there. He didn’t bother wiping anything down; he hadn’t had fingerprints since he was 13 anyway.

Nobody in the Underground did anymore. The few babies born had their prints burned off by their parents now to protect them. It’s hard to identify someone with no physical identity.

Nino made it to the window without incident, Aiba’s skates working better than he would have expected of one of his friend’s gadgets. They rolled silently and Aiba had sworn up and down that they would, with enough momentum, let him skate up a vertical surface. Nino had yet to test this hypothesis for fear he’d end up with his head smashed in; Aiba had not provided a helmet.

Then, at the corner of his awareness, Nino heard a tiny, almost imperceptible ‘twang’, followed by a soft buzz. He froze, focusing entirely on the sound.

“Fuck,” he muttered. The detection System had caught him and was transmitting. He had two options; he could shut the System down, or he could run for it. Shutting it down would only draw more attention to his presence here; Systems didn’t just _stop_ , and the Force was paying attention now.

Running it was. He longed for the days when it could all be blamed on a stray cat, but the Ment had banned animals in the city seven years ago.

Nino flipped his hand over, exposing his wrist. A small display lit up, tiny dots blinking across a grid. Red, he determined. Maybe that wasn’t the real name for the color, but that was the one he’d decided must be red. He stood by his belief that this display was the best invention Aiba had ever come up with; the Ment tracked the Force with their own signals and with this tracker, he could see them coming by tapping into the Ment’s own network.

The idiots never kept track of how many people were watching.

The Force didn’t use flashing lights and sirens. They didn’t need to; people got out of their way, or they were arrested too. No resistance, no excuses. They would be upon you before you’d had a chance to breathe.

Time to test the skates, Nino thought as he pulled down his goggles, planted his feet on the outside wall and pushed.

Dropping down seventeen stories on wheels was no mean feat, and for a moment Nino wondered how, exactly, he would transition from vertical to horizontal without shattering his femurs. But then his wrist display flashed ‘VERY DANGER!!!’ at him at the same time as the rear of the skates let out a short jet burst, taking him off the wall and forward to the flat ground.

“Well,” Nino said after a pause. “That’s... unexpectedly convenient.”

Continuing to skate was the key. If he stopped for any amount of time, the chances of being caught would skyrocket. The Force was good at what they did; three dots tattooed above his right eyebrow were testament to that. Each one stood for a time he hadn’t managed to get away in time.

Nino really didn’t want a fourth; it would upset the attractive balance on his face, he felt. But as he rounded a corner into the City Limits proper, he drew up short in front of a huge black wall. Or at least, it had been black.

Now, it was covered in color. Nearly a full two stories, the graffiti crawled up the surface of the wall, images pressed together tightly like the artist had too much to say in too little space. Every color was laid on bright and thick and transitioned as smoothly as a blink. It was breathtaking.

He wanted to stay here and try to name every color he saw. At least half of them he’d never seen before in his life, and considering how quickly the Ment crushed any signs like these of rebellion, he probably never would get a chance again.

Some twenty-odd years ago, right around the same time the Ment stopped being a good thing for the city and started being “an irrepressible fucking dictatorship” (as Jun had put it), they’d banned color. Not many people could see it anyway; some medical cure back in the early 2020s had color-blindness as a side effect, one that carried on somehow. Nino wasn’t sure of the details; all he knew was that people who could see it were arrested. The Ment didn’t stop _using_ color though; the Force uniforms for example were a bright color Nino had decided was orange. The very rich and very powerful were allowed to wear color within reason; the Ment rewarded their loyalty with fashion freedoms, apparently.

But the mural could only have been done by someone who could see it. And Nino realized with a start that he had no idea who that could be.

His wrist flashed at him again, reminding him that dawdling was a very bad idea, and he took off again into the darkness, around the crumbling hunks of concrete that made up the City Limits. All the less-than-loyal lived here, hiding in the pockets that the Force couldn’t find.

Nino had been born here; his mother had died here. The Limits were more home than anywhere else.

~

“Damnit,” the squad leader swore. “Little rat was right here, there’s scorch marks on the wall.”

“Following that trajectory, he’d have gone right around here, Sir!” a helpful newbie chirped. Newbies were like that; trying to overlook the part where they’d signed their lives away for a moderate promise of exemption.

The squad rounded the corner, and it was all Ohno could do not to wince. He’d been here hours ago, before he was called on duty.

“…Get rid of it,” the leader said, his voice soft and dangerous. “Now.”

Ohno remembered smearing the paint across the wall, feeling the paint with his fingers and drowning in the colors. He never wore his eyeglass lens when he was painting; it tinted not just his right eye (blue and gifted with color sight) into a safe, colorblind brown, but also made everything he looked at a sad shade of amber. Even the Force’s obnoxious orange jumpsuits were dulled into a boring dirt tone.

Looking at his mural as the squad rubbed it down with acid, Ohno felt the tiniest bit of relief that at least someone had seen it before it was gone.

~

Nino presented his prize to Jun back in the bar with a grin, panting hard and bracing himself on his knees from the run. Jun ran his hands over the cover, carefully opening it to confirm the contents were as expected.

“The first volume of Dragon Ball,” Jun said reverently. “I’ve never seen one before.”

“That’s it, right? That’s what we were supposed to get?” Nino said, with just a hint of hesitancy. Jun looked up, nodding and closing the book, tucking it into his apron pocket. Nino never had figured out what happened to things after Jun got them; they eventually went to the people who’d asked for them, but the journey was something of a mystery.

Jun ran the local bar in the City Limits. Here, a group of resistance fighters held out, calling themselves the Underground in reference to their tendency to live in places without windows. Jun’s bar was a meeting place for anyone and everyone, but nothing he did was noticeably illegal, and so the Force had no good reason to venture into the Limits and shut him down.

It was called simple ‘The Place’, something Jun had picked specifically because no one could directly mention it without being vague. It’s location was known almost purely by word of mouth, and that suited all the patrons perfectly.

“Everything went okay?” Jun asked, grabbing a glass and pouring Nino some iced tea.

“Well… I may have set off the System.”

“You what?!”

“But I got away!” Nino added quickly, instinctively ducking Jun’s swat. “Nobody saw me!”

“As relieved as I am to hear that,” Jun drawled. “You’re getting sloppy.”

“I’m getting to old for this, that’s all,” Nino shrugged with a grin. Jun twitched; he was two months younger than Nino, both a youthful twenty-two. Aiba had them beat by a year at twenty-three, although mentally he gave the air of someone quite a bit younger.

As if summoned by the barb, Aiba appeared out of the back. One side of his hair was sticking straight up, and he held a sack in one hand that was smoking… and wiggling.

“Jun!” Aiba declared brightly as soon as his eyes settled on his target. “I’ve got a present for you!”

“Oh. Um,” Jun said, looking at the bag and recoiling at the thought of having to touch it. Nino snickered gleefully into one hand.

“You seemed kind of stressed lately so I thought maybe if you had a pet or something? Did you know petting a cat or dog for twenty minutes a day lowers your blood pressure? I read it in one those old magazines you’ve got filed away!” Aiba informed them, putting one finger in the air in an ‘educator’ pose.

“Aiba-chan,” Nino reminded gently. “Animals aren’t allowed.”

“Right!” Aiba agreed. “That’s why I made you this!”

Reaching into the sack (and tossing it to the floor as Jun let out a strangled noise) Aiba pulled out what looked like a very ugly, very dirty throw pillow from the late 1970s. Beaming, Aiba tucked it in his elbow and stroked it deliberately, and the pillow gave a low, gargley sort of rumble.

“It purrs! See? Like a cat!” Aiba explained, holding it out to Jun with the pride of someone presenting the queen with a new gown. Jun twitched.

“Awww, that’s so sweet of you Aiba-chan!” Nino chirped, enjoying Jun’s expressions of conflict. “Go ahead, Jun, you try petting it too!”

“Er. Thanks,” Jun said, attempting a smile and only managing a grimace with teeth. He took the pillow gingerly, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger, and stroking it with the tip of his other index. The pillow gargled happily, and Aiba shouted his victory.

“It’ll look lovely in your bed, Jun,” Nino said brightly, and Jun shot him a look of pure loathing.

~

Sho finished his conference call with the same genial smile he’d started it with; entirely charming and entirely fake. As the Ment’s pet Scholar, it was his job to remind them of everything they had ruined and destroyed, and tell them how to keep it from coming back. They’d been calling him more and more frequently of late, borrowing his extended Generational Memory to try and keep the citizens in line.

Honestly, it pissed him off.

Sho didn’t directly remember things before the Ment came into power. But his father had grown up pre-Ment, and raised him to appreciate, and most importantly, remember. Sho knew what the old countries were called, what languages they spoke and cultural mindsets they held. As a child, Sho had been fascinated by all these things, as they were practically fantasy worlds to a boy who had never, and would never, see them. But as he aged, Sho was struck by the anger that he was never given a chance to experience these cultures, locked out by the Ment on the pretense of protection.

When Sho was six, they banned all books except the ones written, published, and approved by the Ment itself. That was when he first started to understand why it was so important that he never forget.

But as a boy with knowledge, he held value to the Ment. Instead of imprisoning a rich and educated citizen, the Ment drew him up a contract as the exclusive benefiter from Sho’s genius. He’d signed knowing what it meant, just as well as he knew that if he was careful, he could continue as he always had without the Ment’s interference. And sure enough, he continued to learn and read and absorb, straight from the private, secret library his father had hidden away for him.

In the past year, Sho had started hearing rumors of an underground rebel movement, made of the last generation of pre-Ment citizens and their children, raised on native cultures and ideals. These people were living time capsules, determined to keep their story alive even under the hand of the oppressive government.

It was Sho’s greatest desire in life to meet these mysterious renegades and learn from them what it meant to keep fighting.


	2. Chapter 2

Ohno ducked his head in shame, submissive and silent as his squad leader berated him for yet another error on his report. Ohno hadn’t been terribly good at spelling when they still were allowed to use the native language (which he’d been old enough to start in school), let alone the Common required now. Common characters were never the first things to come to his mind, and he simply couldn’t get his mind to transfer the language he could speak perfectly well onto paper.

“If you can’t even be bothered to check your own damn work, how do you expect to get anywhere?!” The squad leader snapped at him and Ohno nodded his head in wordless agreement. “It’s no wonder you’ve been a level 2 for so long; you’re useless.”

‘Then get rid of me,’ Ohno wanted to say. But he knew better, so instead he said, “Yes Sir. Sorry Sir.”

Once dismissed for the day, Ohno carefully changed out of his uniform and walked home. He lived in a large living complex mostly inhabited by other members of the force and their families; the building had more floors than Ohno could remember, but fortunately, he never forgot the two that mattered. Floor 56, unit 217 was his mother’s meager apartment. Floor 89, unit 134 was his own. He hadn’t really ever intended to leave his mother like that, but the Force officers were given their own units as a perk, and it was too small for the both of them.

Leaving the lift on the 56th floor, Ohno let himself into his mother’s unit. He had his own card-key for the door, and she had one for his. Ohno slipped off his shoes in the doorway; even though the tradition had been ‘abolished’, he couldn’t shake the habits he’d grown up with in the first five years of his life. He left his bag with his uniform and helmet next to his shoes; the less he had to look at them, the better.

“Mom?” he called out, following his nose to the kitchen.

“Ah, Satoshi!” his mother chirped brightly, waving him in. “Come taste this, it’s a new block. Not bad if you put a little onion in, I think.”

Smiling, Ohno obliged her and took a bite off the spoon she offered. He sighed happily; it was delicious. Nobody could improve a block meal like his mother.

“It’s good,” he confirmed, dropping a kiss on her cheek. She grinned, pleased with the praise and continued to stir, humming to herself happily. Sitting down at the small kitchen table, Ohno watched her bustle around and felt himself relaxing.

She was why he did it, after all.

At age sixteen, Ohno had been on the verge of dropping out of his local academy. He didn’t do particularly well in his lessons, constantly confused by the contradictions between what the Ment curriculum said, and what he remembered. It was then that the force made their once-yearly sweep through the academies to recruit. He’d been pulled aside when the recruiters realized he had color vision in one eye, and correctly guessed his mother had full color vision.

They had presented him with a choice: join the Force and use your eye for us, and have your mother provided for, or the both of you can go to jail tonight.

Ohno signed the papers and moved into his unit the next day. His mother had cried, not understanding why, and he didn’t have the heart to explain to her that he was terrified.

Now, years later, both knew better than to bring Ohno’s employment up. They spent nearly every evening together, talking and eating dinner and avoiding the topic until his mother went to bed, and Ohno returned to his own unit.

Once there, he would change into more comfortable clothes, clothes that he’d snuck out of the confiscated goods section of his Force HQ, clothes with color, and grab his tools. Sneaking out of the building wasn’t as hard as one might think; he’d picked up a few tricks from the people he’d been forced to arrest over the years. Then he’d wander down to the City Limits and find a wall no one remembered.

He’d paint until the sun rose or he ran out of space; whichever came first. Then he went home and slept for a few hours before rising to become one of the Bad Guys again.

~

Nino woke up with Aiba’s elbow in his ear and Jun’s hair in his mouth. Somewhere around his knee, the Cat-Pillow was gargling happily as Aiba curled his toes into it, attempting something somewhat like a stroke. It was dark, but that wasn’t any indicator of time; the house had no windows. Groaning and spitting out Jun’s hair, Nino forced himself upright; a difficult task with Aiba’s shoulder pinning his, and Jun’s head on Nino’s chest.

Aiba and Jun had their own beds, but they were smaller and much harder to nest in than Nino’s. Over the years, Nino had carefully constructed his WonderBed out of old dumped mattresses and worn handmade blankets he’d stolen from Confiscation Houses. Even better, one of Aiba’s failed attempts at a Toasting Laser (“Just point at the bread, and POOF!”) ended up making a rather capable bed warmer. After missions or even just hard days, it wasn’t unusual for the three of them to end up piled in Nino’s bed for the night.

“Jun,” Nino grunted, his voice still sleep-fogged. “Jun, get up. Time to open the Place.” He reached down to fluff Jun’s hair violently, guaranteed to have him up and preening in no time. Sure enough, Jun jerked upright with a cry of distress, automatically smoothing and finger-combing through his hair.

“What time is it?” Jun asked once he’d finished having a panic attack.

“Dunno,” Nino shrugged. “Ask the clock.” Jun nodded and turned to the small magic eight ball on Nino’s nightstand, shaking it upside down.

“What time is it?” he said aloud before turning it over.

7:46AM, the ball informed him. BUT ASK AGAIN LATER; IT CHANGES.

“Duly noted,” Jun snorted, setting it back down and pushing himself with great effort out of the bed. Aiba made a soft whimpery noise and curled into the empty spaces Jun and Nino had left behind, and Jun paused for a moment to look at Aiba, conflicted.

Nino sighed. He really was just too nice.

“I’ll start everything,” he said to Jun, low enough to not wake Aiba. “You get this guy up. And don’t do anything fun without me.”

Jun didn’t thank him, but he really didn’t have to. Nino knew a grateful look when he saw one. He climbed all the way off the bed as Jun got back on, running a hand down Aiba’s back and nudging him gently into wakefulness.

Nino wandered up the stairs, kicked on his shoes, and headed out the door into a tunnel that had probably once been a sewer of some sort but now functioned solely as a road for the Underground. Three ‘doors’ down was the back entrance for The Place, and Nino walked up the stairs and into the bar with little trouble, starting up the various machines and setting out the dishes quickly.

He’d only been there ten minutes when there was a soft knocking on the front (still closed) door. Frowning, Nino silently edged to it, peeking out the viewfinder Aiba had attached. Standing on the doorstep was a man not much older than Nino, dressed in clean, bright colors.

He opened the door.

“Um, hello,” the man said brightly. “My name is Sho. Is this The Place?”

Nino grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him inside, shutting the door tightly behind him.

~

“I need some help,” Sho explained. Once Nino had finished berating him for being so damn obvious and Jun and Aiba had arrived, they managed to get him to sit down long enough to talk. “There are these… books.”

“We get a lot of books,” Jun said. “Where are they?”

“In my house,” said Sho, and everyone blinked at him.

“…You already have them?” Nino asked slowly, as though Sho was mentally retarded.

“That’s the problem,” Sho continued. “I need you to take them from me. But I don’t want to _lose_ them, I just can’t have them in my house anymore.”

“Okay,” said Nino. “Assuming we agree. Then what?”

“Well, it’s going to take a few trips,” said Sho. “There are more than 400 at last count.”

“…Where,” asked Jun, with carefully measured patience. “Are we supposed to put 400 books while you are being sniffed out by the Ment?”

“They don’t sniff me very long,” Sho said. “A week, at most. You can bring them back after.”

“You are insane,” Nino determined firmly. “Utterly insane.”

“Well, yes, probably,” Sho agreed. “But I did go to all the trouble to track you down, so… what do you think?”

“No,” said Nino.

“I’d pay per book, per hour, of course,” Sho added with a smile. “Generously, for your trouble.”

“When can we start?” Nino chirped.

Jun put his head in his hands.

~

Ohno’s latest project was a slab that had fallen sideways in some earthquake or another, smooth and untouched since the city fell apart. He sprayed his homemade paints across the concrete, shading and shaping as he went. He never had plans when he started; he let the ‘canvas’ decide for him.

Today’s piece was very yellow; he was excited to see the pigment was staying opaque. His yellows and reds had a problem of turning a bit translucent as they dried.

Completely focused on his art, Ohno didn’t hear the clatter coming up the street behind him until a boy on skates tripped over one of Ohno’s brushes and nearly face planted in the street. The boy caught himself just in time and rolled, stopping to check to make sure all his limbs were intact. He looked up and spotted Ohno.

Ohno froze.

He watched the boy look at him, then at the wall, then at the paints scattered around him, then back at Ohno.

“Run,” the boy said. “They’re maybe two blocks behind me.”

“What?” Ohno said, startled. “But, my paint—“

“What’s more important,” the boy snapped, holding out a hand to Ohno to pull him to his feet. “Your paint or living another day to leave another image behind?”

Ohno took only a moment to decide; he grabbed the boy’s hand and let himself be pulled down the street, and pointed in a new direction.

“Go that way; get as much distance as you can. Don’t circle back. Don’t draw attention to yourself. I’ll delay them here,” the boy instructed, glancing at a display on his wrist. When Ohno didn’t move, the boy looked up again.

“I mean it. Go!”

Ohno wanted to say thanks. He wanted to ask the boy’s name. He wanted to do a lot of things that there just wasn’t time for.

So he nodded, and ran.

~

Nino waited until the painter was out of sight before heading to the tubes of paint. He pulled a bottle of acid out of his pocket; he kept it for strict emergencies only. Opening the specially-treated cork, he upended the bottle across the tubes, melting them into piles of bubbling pigments.

The painter had fingerprints. Nino wasn’t going to let him get caught that easily.

As soon as he was satisfied that nothing could be gained from the remains, Nino took off again. This was the second night in the row he was outrunning the Force; he wasn’t going to push his already poor luck any further.

He did spare a moment to wish he’d asked the painter’s name, though.


	3. Chapter 3

Sho came by The Place again the next day, greeting Jun like an old friend and sitting down at the bar with a huge, friendly grin. Jun blinked at him, and set down the glass he’d been drying calmly.

“What,” Jun asked seriously. “Are you doing here?”

“Well, I thought we had to make plans,” Sho said, wilting a bit. “Right?”

“Not here,” Jun replied shortly. “That’d be stupid. You can’t be seen around us.”

“Oh,” said Sho, sinking down on his stool. “What about the kid?”

“Kid?”

“Yeah, with the dots on his face? The one who’s going to… do it?” Sho said, gesturing over one eyebrow.

“Nino is two months older than I am, so I hardly would call him a ‘kid’. Brat, sure,” Jun shrugged, hiding an amused smile. Nino didn’t appreciate being mistaken for a much younger boy, and had a tendency to swear colorfully when it happened.

“Fine then,” Sho corrected himself. “When do I get to talk to him?”

“Probably tonight,” Jun said, shrugging again. “Depending on what he’s got in mind.”

“So I should come back tonight?”

“No,” Jun said, grinning. “You should stay home tonight. Nino will come to you.”

“He doesn’t know where I live,” Sho said.

“I’m quite sure he does,” Jun replied.

~

Jun closed the bar just after dark; the people who visit wouldn’t stay long after that anyway. Not when the Force patrolled the streets on the edges of the City Limits looking for someone careless enough to be caught. Sticking the keys into his front chest pocket, Jun was quick in darting down the tunnel to their underground home. The Force didn’t know about the tunnels for the most part, but that didn’t make them particularly safe.

He kicked off his shoes inside the door; Aiba insisted that shoes were not allowed in the home. Lamps set into the walls gave off pools of slightly warm, yellow light, every gap between them dark. Nino’s skates were still against the wall; he hadn’t left yet. Jun walked to Nino’s room, the door open and inviting. Leaning against the doorframe, he took in the sight of Nino seated cross-legged in his bed, shirt long gone with his back to the door, and an ancient mp3 player dismantled in a tray in his lap.

Nino had the device connected to a small notebook sized computer display, and his fingers skimmed across the keyboard almost too fast to actually be seen typing. The glow from the screen cast his hunched torso in a strange blue light, and Jun could tell by the way he kept murmuring to himself that he’d been engrossed in it for a while.

Approaching on silent steps, Jun came up behind Nino, pressing his fingertips against the bare skin at the nape of Nino’s neck. Jumping, Nino leaned his head back, and Jun moved his fingers to Nino’s shoulder, standing close behind him with his legs against Nino’s back.

“You look busy,” he commented softly, and Nino laughed. He leaned back into Jun, only then realizing how tense he’d gotten from bending over for so long.

“There’s stuff still on here, you know,” Nino explained, gesturing at the mp3 player. “Trapped on the drive, there’s music.”

“So you’re liberating it?”

“I’m trying,” Nino said, with a grin, rolling his head and wincing at a crack from his neck. “Wouldn’t it be cool, to hear music? I want whatever’s on here. I want it.”

“A noble cause,” Jun commented dryly. “But you’re expected elsewhere tonight.”

Nino pulled a face, but let Jun pull him off the bed anyway. He stretched, loosening his body from the hours of detail work, Jun’s hand never leaving his shoulder. Noticing, Nino glanced at it before meeting Jun’s eyes. Smirking, he dropped a kiss on Jun’s fingers before pulling away and grabbing a shirt.

“Sakurai Sho,” Nino said as he tugged the t-shirt over his head and reaching for his vest. “Rich, and well-positioned in the Ment. Scholar, officially, although apparently he’s got quite a rebellious side no doubt inherited from his late father.”

“Family business is hardly related,” Jun commented, not bothering to turn away as Nino changed into his ‘work pants’.

“His father was put under house arrest by the Ment and marked as a highly dangerous individual,” Nino said. “The exact reason wasn’t specified in writing that I could find, but I can make a guess.”

“Books full of illegal knowledge?”

“Better,” Nino said with a grin. “He taught his son.”

~

Ohno was exhausted. Work had been long and hard; they’d tracked and arrested an elderly couple who were speaking the old language. He gave them credit; they didn’t fight at all, only swore colorfully at the officers as they were carted away, still in the language they were being arrested for.

Once home in his own unit, Ohno had changed quickly. He hated his uniform to the point of keeping it in a box near the door when he didn’t have to be wearing it; out of sight, out of mind. Wandering into his living room, he sat down in front of a board he’d been working with. A bowl on the floor contained various pigments and liquids to add, rebuilding his homemade paint collection.

His thoughts strayed to the boy on skates that had probably saved him. He had a little trouble pushing away his irritation at the loss of all those paints, but he recognized rationally that without the boy’s help, he wouldn’t have escaped. Not to mention that the boy had seen his painting, however briefly.

That was the thing that excited Ohno the most, really. The idea that he was reminding the world, however slowly, what color meant. What expression and art and feeling used to mean. Why these things shouldn’t, couldn’t be extinguished. If even one person saw his work and was able to consider it, even for just a moment, then he’d gotten his message across.

He didn’t have enough paints to be going out again for a while, but he knew he’d go out again.

After so long, Ohno didn’t even think to stop.

~

Nino scaled the wall of Sho’s enormous home with relatively little trouble. A simple smoke bomb had distracted the guards long enough for him to scurry up the concrete and over. The laser beam across the top hadn’t even slowed him down; a pair of mirrors placed in the center, and the signal didn’t even know it had been interrupted.

That was the problem with people these days, Nino thought. They didn’t think simply enough anymore. Nino believed in keeping things easy.

Once in the yard, he had three choices. He could break through the front door (with the biggest alarm, most sensitive locks, and highest chance of being seen), or he could try the back door (still with an alarm, more locks, and while less guarded, still watched).

Or he could just go in the sliding glass porch door on the second floor.

With Aiba’s skates, he had no trouble rolling right up the side of the house and hopping onto the balcony. He noticed it lead not into a sitting room, but rather a large bedroom. The lock was a snap to break into; a musical key, of all things, and programmed to a nursery rhyme from a time before the Ment.

How cute, Nino thought as he entered the house. Sakurai sets tomorrow’s clothes out on a chair.

Speaking of Sho, Nino found him as he left the bedroom and directly into a sitting room. The scholar was absorbed in a book that looked to weigh a good ten pounds, resting on a couch with his brows knit in concentration. Sitting on a table behind Sho, Nino let his legs swing.

“For a book that big,” Nino commented blithely. “There better be a lot of explosions.”

Sho jumped off the couch with a yelp, whirling around to face Nino. He pointed, mouth opening as though he was going to shout, only to close again with a snap. His accusing finger drooped somewhat as he attempted to find words.

“No explosions?” Nino asked. “Well, kiss scenes then. That works too, I guess.”

“You… but the doors… and the fence,” Sho said, attempting to rationalize Nino’s presence without rendering his entire security system pointless.

“Your porch locks to the tune of that Hina Matsuri song,” Nino chirped. “Charming, really.”

“…You know the song?” Sho asked sheepishly.

“I can use chopsticks too, but don’t tell anyone,” Nino drawled, hopping off the table and rolling up to Sho. “That doesn’t really explain why you know it, though.”

“Ah, well. I… studied music, for a while,” Sho shrugged. Nino grinned crookedly at him.

“You mean your father used to sing them for you when you were small,” Nino corrected.

“My father was tone-deaf. If anybody was singing, it was my mother,” Sho said, giving Nino a grin of his own.

It wasn’t long before Nino had kicked off his skates, settling cross-legged on Sho’s couch as they talked. Sho explained that the Ment had been paying closer attention to him lately, no doubt in part because the things Sho knew were located in books that weren’t supposed to exist any longer.

“I have the last remaining copies of over 300 books,” Sho explained, low and urgent. “If I get caught with these, they’ll be destroyed.”

“And you’ll be arrested,” Nino added.

“At this point, that’s hardly my main concern,” Sho responded. “If I die, yes, a lot of information dies with me. But as long as the books exist, there’s always someone else to read them and learn, right? As long as it’s written down, it can continue to teach.”

After agreeing on a priority list of which books to remove first, Sho helped Nino memorize the titles. A physical plan was too risky; an order that only existed in their minds was far wiser. Sho was impressed with Nino’s ability to retain detailed information, and Nino in turn found himself appreciating Sho’s efficiency. Not to mention that Sho had genuinely good reasons for needing the job done; it wasn’t a game to him.

It was the safety of the past being carried on to the present.

“I’ll start sometimes next week,” Nino said as he stood to leave.

“When?” Sho asked, but Nino shook his head.

“It’s better if you don’t know. I won’t tell you when I’m coming, and you won’t see me. If you do, then something has probably gone very wrong,” Nino said.

Sho nodded his understanding, but Nino didn’t miss the resigned expression that drifted across his face.

~

Nino arrived home shortly before dawn. As soon as he entered his bedroom, he saw Aiba sprawled across his bed. There was a smear of grease across one of Aiba’s cheeks, and two of his fingers were bandaged. Climbing onto the bed, he flopped down next to Aiba just as Jun entered. The youngest joined them on the bed, spooning against Aiba’s back and fussing with the blanket pulled across them all.

“What’d he do?” Nino murmured into the dark, his eyelids already drooping.

“Burned them,” Jun explained, already knowing Nino was referring to Aiba’s injuries. “He was welding and the torch spluttered. It’s not too bad, but they did blister some.”

“No gloves?”

“Burned through them,” Jun said. “He actually _was_ being careful.”

Nino snorted, rubbing at Aiba’s cheek with the corner of the blanket. Aiba wasn’t stupid; he knew the dangers of everything he did. It was just that sometimes he cut corners in his excitement, or stopped paying attention to the right things. Jun and Nino both worried about him, but neither tried to stop him. Just like Jun had his bar and Nino had his jobs, Aiba’s inventions were his way of forgetting the outside world was broken.

Aiba murmured in his sleep, shifting, and Jun curled an arm over his waist at the same time as Nino dropped a kiss on Aiba’s forehead. Drawn into his warmth, they drifted off to sleep curled together in a comforting mess of limbs.


	4. Chapter 4

Nino dreamed in a strange mix of greyscale and color. For the most part, the images that flitted across his mind’s eye were varying shades of black and white, dead and cold. His ‘visual’ perspectives tended to be equally flat and two dimensional; rarely did a dream feel or look anything like real life. But he always knew what the key points where, because important people or objects would be in vivid color, standing out against the rest.

Ever since he’d come across the mural on the wall, one had appeared in his dreams. It didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the rest of the dream, but there was always one there, and every time his dream-self stopped to take a closer look, the painting shifted, warping as he tried to focus on it. He couldn’t seem to get a clear view of the picture.

Nino woke up with a soft hiss, the frustration of the dream lingering on into wakefulness as he shifted. Aiba’s arm was around his waist, and as he turned into the older man’s warmth, Aiba’s thumb smoothed across Nino’s hip where his shirt had ridden up to expose skin. Murmuring low, Aiba’s breath ghosted across Nino’s ear as he spoke, his voice still rough from just waking up.

“Morning,” He said. “How’d it go yesterday?”

“Fine,” Nino answered, not bothering to mask the shiver that ran down his spine. “I’ll officially start next week. How’s your hand?”

Aiba lifted the fingertips brushing across Nino’s skin, glancing at the bandaged fingers. Flexing them thoughtfully, he flicked a lock of hair off Nino’s forehead and grinned sheepishly.

“I can still feel them, so I think I’m okay.”

Frowning, Nino caught Aiba’s hand, giving his injuries a look-over before kissing each fingertip softly. Aiba smiled, curling his hand in Nino’s grip and leaning in to replace the digits with his lips. Waking up much more quickly now that Aiba was tasting his mouth, Nino had no problems with hooking a leg over the back of Aiba’s knee and pulling himself closer.

“I hope you weren’t planning to leave me out,” Jun drawled from the doorway, and Aiba pulled away long enough for Nino to extend an arm invitingly towards him, a smug smile on his face.

“We had a feeling you’d get in here soon,” Nino commented, all mock-sweetness, as Jun joined them on the bed. Aiba sat up as Jun sat behind him, his attention shifting sharply as Jun slid his hand up Aiba’s back and dropped a kiss at the back of his neck.

Aiba never slept in anything but his boxers, practically radiating heat as he slept. Nino preferred whatever he happened to hit the bed wearing: usually a loose long-sleeved t-shirt and soft cotton pants. Jun had designated pajamas, although he had been known to fall asleep without remembering to change. This morning, Nino could tell Jun had been up for an hour or so because he was already carefully groomed, his hair suddenly irritating Nino with its perfect set. Jun pulled Aiba back against his chest, his hands sliding up Aiba’s bare skin, and Nino crawled forward to lick along Aiba’s collarbone.

Groaning softly, Aiba wound a hand through Nino’s hair, tugging Nino’s face up to his for a deep kiss. Pleased with the attention, Nino slid easily into Aiba’s lap, his hands resting on Jun’s and following them up Aiba’s torso.

“Aiba-chan,” Jun purred into his ear. “Let’s get Nino undressed.”

“Only if you do too,” Aiba countered with a grin.

Jun was only too happy to remove his shirt (folding it carefully and setting it aside) as Aiba tugged Nino’s t-shirt over his head, taking a moment to instigate a tickle-fight. Nino jerked with a giggle, flopping onto his back and curling into a ball as Aiba attacked his sides with a playful grin. Jun rolled his eyes before coming to Nino’s aid by wiggling his fingers on Aiba’s lower back, tickling at the sensitive patch of skin.

Nino decided to get things back on track by reaching out to roughly palm Aiba through his boxers. Smirking at the groan that left Aiba’s throat, Jun was more than happy to drag a thumb across Aiba’s nipple. Nino continued rolling his hand against Aiba’s growing erection, leaning over Aiba’s body to lip at his earlobe. Eagerly, Aiba grabbed Nino’s hips and pulled them down to grind against his thigh, pulling a moan from Nino. As Jun ran his free hand through Nino’s hair, Nino obligingly reached around Aiba’s waist to unbutton Jun’s pants and pull his cock free, stroking. Jun caught Aiba’s mouth for a sloppy kiss, all their movements staccato and each on a separate rhythm.

Jun finished first, groaning against Aiba’s neck as Nino finished his efficient handjob. Nino was next, hissing and dropping his chin to his chest as he came, hiding his suddenly open expression from view. Aiba followed moments later as Jun sucked hard on the patch of skin just behind his ear.

“Great,” Jun said as soon as his breathing had slowed enough to talk. “Now I have to shower again.”

“If you’re going to complain, we’ll leave you out next time,” Nino drawled, testing the strength of his legs as he stood.

“You’re going out today?” Aiba asked, clearly a bit distracted by the way Jun was running a hand up and down his arm. Nino looked at him, about to respond, but turned away quickly to hide the embarrassingly fond look he’d felt bloom across his face.

“Business, you know. I’ll probably be back in time for dinner though,” Nino said quickly, grabbing at the clothes he’d abandoned on the floor and dressing. Jun stood, blocking Nino’s path out the door and finger-combing through the smaller man’s hair. Nino fidgeted, shifting from foot to foot, but allowed Jun to groom him; he never turned away Jun’s rare shows of sweetness towards him. They were friends, very good friends, but Jun wasn’t one for needless displays of affection. He preferred subtle gestures, nearly all of which Nino appreciated.

He also recognized this particular habit as an expression of worry from Jun, and Nino chose to reassure him by letting him fuss.

“May I please go fight evil now, Mother?” He asked with obnoxious sweetness once Jun’s hands dropped away. Unfortunately, they hadn’t yet gotten far enough away to avoid whacking him on the head.

“If I was your mother, I would have drowned you by now,” Jun snorted.

“You just mussed my hair up again, Mother,” Nino replied brightly, darting out the door before Jun could strangle him. With a huff, Jun sat down on the bed again, ignoring Aiba’s giggles.

“One of these days,” Jun said firmly. “I’m just going to push him off a high wall.”

“Can’t now,” Aiba chirped, leaning his head against Jun’s elbow. “My skates would save him!”

“You’re not allowed to make him stuff anymore,” Jun decided.

“How come?”

“Because every time you do, he gets more annoying.”

“He also leaves more,” Aiba pointed out softly. Jun didn’t answer; his fingers brushed through Aiba’s hair, not really arranging so much as stroking soothingly. After a moment of silence, he broke the quiet, the hint of concern gone from his voice.

“Omurice for breakfast?”

Aiba smiled.

“I want a ketchup heart on mine!”

~

Nino appreciated Sho’s taste in furniture. The couch he was currently curled up on was dark and plush, each pillow large but under stuffed, like the cushions were trying to swallow him. Giggling to himself, Nino had kicked off his skates and socks and pulled his knees up tight so he could wiggle his bare feet against the soft material. In his hands was an old, faded book, and he’d spent nearly half an hour just like that: tucked into the sofa, engrossed in a story older than anyone he’d ever met.

Sho was not really expecting to see him when he stepped out of the shower.

“AH,” he said eloquently.

“Yo,” Nino greeted him, grinning. “You dropped your towel.”

“Why,” Sho asked after he’d covered himself again. “Are you here?”

“Time waits for no man,” Nino responded, his gaze dropping back to the book.

“…Sir Walter Scott?” Sho guessed after a moment.

“’Everyman’, actually,” Nino said, holding the book up. “It’s pretty good; a little heavy on the morals, but most 16th century European writings were, I guess.”

Sho blinked at him, before narrowing his eyes skeptically.

“I suppose you’ve read a lot of 16th century European works, then?” He said, walking to his wardrobe and pulling open a door.

“I carry illegal materials around for a living,” Nino snorted. “I’d have to be stupid to not take peeks.”

“I guess you have a point there,” Sho acceded, selecting a shirt and pants and draping them over one arm. He turned to go back to the bathroom to change, but found himself suddenly pressed against the dark wood of the wardrobe by Nino. The younger man had moved silently, his bare feet quick and quiet across the carpeting, easily pinning Sho in place when he’d turned.

“I also take peeks when people flash me,” Nino purred, inching forward and fully aware that Sho couldn’t take any more steps back. Sho flushed a dark red, and Nino followed the color as it moved down his naked chest. His gaze being focused where it was, he easily noticed the slight hitch in Sho’s breathing.

“Sorry. About that, I mean,” Sho said quickly, looking determinedly over Nino’s shoulder. “You surprised me.”

“I’m pretty sure I could surprise you more,” Nino answered smoothly, and Sho caught the drop in tone and the way Nino’s gaze was significantly sharper than before. Sho knew a challenge when he heard one, and he’d always been competitive. He was kissing Nino in between one beat and the next, careful and steady at first but quickly losing his focus as Nino pressed forward, clearly enjoying himself.

“Do you do this with all your clients?” Sho asked when they separated for air.

“Only the ones that show me the goods,” Nino teased, grinning.

“Is there a reason you’re here?” Sho asked after a moment. His question was a serious one, and Nino found himself pulling away completely for fear that Sho was learning all too fast how to read him. He didn’t much like being predictable, anymore than he liked being caught.

“…What do you know about music?” He asked finally, flopping back on the couch with his hands in his pockets.

“In general, or specifically?” Sho replied, picking up his clothes again and deciding after having exposed himself once, there wasn’t much point in privacy anymore. He turned his back to Nino and pulled on his pants before facing him again to put on his shirt. Nino noticed with some pleasure that it was yellow, like the yolk of an egg.

“Specifically. Circa 2005 to 2010 or so,” Nino clarified, not bothering to hide the way he was watching Sho dress.

“Quite well, if we’re talking about Japanese and English music, I guess. I couldn’t tell you much about Europe, and aside from a smattering of South Korean, my other-Asian knowledge is pretty slim,” Sho admitted, settling on the sofa next to Nino. “Why?”

Nino extracted the mp3 player he’d hacked from his pocket. With help from Aiba, they’d made a new case for it with built-in speakers, and after hours of careful coding, he’d managed to make the files play more or less the same way they had years before.

“All the sound data is intact,” He explained as he placed the player in Sho’s open palm. “But any corresponding informational data was corrupted beyond what I could repair. It plays, but I want to know what the songs are called, and who sang them.”

Sho turned the device over in his hand, his expression reverent.

“You got it to play?” He asked, astonished. “These things almost always end up destroying themselves, between battery death and hard drive crashes.”

“Battery death doesn’t affect the storage unit,” Nino pointed out reasonably. “All the data is still there, you just can’t access it anymore. Once I gave it an outside power source, I could pull all the music off and re-encode. Finding a code that would play them was a pain in the ass, though.”

“Can I play it?” Sho asked, and Nino was pleased to realize that if he said no, Sho would return it without question.

“Sure, but you have to tell me what they’re called.”

The music started, and Sho’s eyes closed immediately as he focused. The melody was soft and slightly mournful, and the lyrics gave the song away to Sho almost immediately. He laughed, and Nino sat up on his knees and leaned forward, insistent and eager. Looking at him, Sho could see how serious this was for him, and grinning at Nino, he started to sing along.

“It’s called ‘Kurumi’. Mr. Children sang it on an album from… 2004, I believe? Somewhere around there,” He explained. Nino’s face lit up, and he pointed urgently at the player.

“And the next one? What’s the next one?”

~

“What are you working on?” Jun asked politely, peering over Aiba’s shoulder to scan the work table. Aiba didn’t look up, but he did smile and lean to the side so Jun had a better view.

“Boxers that heat themselves,” He explained, gesturing at the pile of wires and underwear. “It sucks, right? To put on cold pants. Now your pants will always be warm!”

“I… guess that makes sense,” Jun agreed hesitantly. “Having any trouble with them?”

“Well,” Aiba admitted sheepishly. “I’m having trouble with the temperature. At worst, they’ll catch fire. At best, they’ll give you severe burns and render you infertile.”

“I think I’d rather be cold,” Jun snorted.

“That’s why they’re not for you,” Aiba sniffed. “They’re for Nino, since he’s always whining about being too cold.”

“You make too many presents for Nino,” Jun said, proud of how little envy edged into his voice.

“That’s because you don’t seem to like the presents I make you,” Aiba replied, and for a moment, Jun felt a bit guilty for not being able to show appreciation for demented purring pillows.

“The presents you make me are, while creative, not particularly useful for me, Aiba-chan,” Jun said, trying very hard not to sound ungrateful. Then he noticed Aiba was hiding a grin, and realized that he was being baited.

“I’m sorry Jun-chan,” Aiba said, full of mock-sincerity. “Next time I’ll make you an apron that punches people when they say stupid things. You’ll save so much time at work!”

“Now that,” Jun said with an approving nod. “Is a damn good invention. You get right on that.”

“I could also add a heating unit, so—“

“ _Aiba._ ”

“Fine, fine. No heating unit,” Aiba agreed, leaning his shoulder into Jun’s side. “Now, could you hold this piece for me? It keeps moving when I try to adjust it.”

~

Ohno’s mother had been acting very strange all evening. She kept jumping, and glancing over her shoulder. She’d even been folding and re-folding her napkin in her lap; a nervous habit she hadn’t done since right before the last time he had to go on a raid mission. Something was clearly wrong, but she didn’t seem to have any intention of telling him what.

“Mom?” He asked finally. “Are you okay?”

She dropped the glass she was holding, and Ohno reflexively pulled her back away from the shatter. Once satisfied she was safe, he knelt and carefully picked up the pieces. His mother remained silent, before sitting down at the table and putting her head in her hands.

“I think they’ve been following me, Satoshi,” She admitted softly. “When I go out to pick up meals, or just for a walk. I keep seeing the same four people where ever I go.”

“Why would they be following you?” Ohno asked, frowning. “You’re not doing anything wrong.”

“I don’t know,” She answered. “That’s what’s got me so worried.”

Ohno reassured his mother as best he could, calming her enough that she felt safe going to bed. As soon as her bedroom door had shut, he returned to the kitchen and took the large shards of glass he’d collected in a paper bag, bringing them with him back to his own unit.

Ground glass was supposedly something that could be mixed with paints. He wanted to try it, but he was distracted by the thought of his mother being marked for some reason. No one had mentioned anything to him at work, and he hadn’t come across any reports pointing her out. He was under the impression that for most minor things, his mother had a carte blanche due to his own enlistment.

If that was wrong, then they were in a lot more danger than he’d ever guessed.


	5. Chapter 5

Sho was in the middle of a moral crisis. On the one hand, he had been identifying songs for hours now, and as much as he had been enjoying himself, there was only so long he could wrack his brain for information before it simply refused to process anymore. On the other, Nino had (somewhere between Otsuka Ai’s ‘CHU-LIP’ and YUI’s ‘Spiral and Escape’) fallen dead asleep, curled against the back of his plush couch, his hands still clenched on his knees in anticipation of the next song.

He was also smiling, and Sho was having a hard time convincing himself that Nino really needed to be woken up and sent home. As he pondered the merits of awakening vs. leaving the boy be, Sho draped a heavy blanket around Nino’s shoulders and arranged him gently to prevent a horrible crick developing in his neck.

Nino had mentioned that the less time they spent together, the better. But he’d also sought Sho out for a completely unrelated-to-the-job task, apparently unable to follow his own rules. Sho didn’t want to force the boy home if he didn’t want to go. On the other hand, it had long since gotten dark, and Sho was willing to bet that if Nino never made it home, the intimidating barkeep from The Place would find a way to knife him quietly and without mess in very short order.

He was also pretty sure they’d never find the body.

“Nino,” Sho said softly, shaking the boy’s shoulder. “Nino, wakeup. It’s after curfew.”

Nino jerked into consciousness, and Sho found himself impressed with how instantly Nino was alert and pulling himself in a defensive position. He was also impressed with the long knife Nino had managed to hide on his small person without Sho noticing until it was drawn and pressed to his throat.

“Nino,” Sho repeated calmly. “You fell asleep. We were listening to music, remember?”

Nino made a small sound of confusion, and Sho continued in the same smooth, soothing tone he’d used the last time someone held a very sharp blade against his neck.

“We were naming the songs. You were tired and fell asleep on my couch. I woke you up because it’s dark now and I wasn’t sure you wanted to stay this late,” Sho explained, careful not to move. After a moment, he felt Nino relax behind him and the knife was taken away from his jugular and tucked neatly back into a flat sheath pressed to Nino’s lower back.

“Sorry,” Nino murmured. “You startled me.”

“Remind me not to do that again in the future,” Sho commented, exhaling in relief.

“Sorry,” Nino said again, sincere. Sho smiled and waved him off, not particularly shaken.

“You were out of it. It’s fine,” He reassured Nino. “But it’s late; do you want to stay here until the morning?”

“I can’t,” Nino said. “I’ve got to get back. They’re expecting me.”

“Be careful,” Sho said seriously. “If you don’t think you’ll make it safely, come back.”

“I already have a mother, thank you,” Nino said, rolling his eyes. “Mother won’t let me leave the house looking like a mess and tells me to clean up my room.”

“I bet your mother hits you,” Sho said with a grin.

“With these huge, bulky rings! One of these days I’ll lose an eye, and then he’ll be sorry.”

“Say hello to him for me then,” Sho said. “And be—“

“Careful, I know. You said that already.”

“I was actually going to say ‘discreet’, but careful works too,” Sho laughed. Nino couldn’t help but grin back. He strapped on his skates, pulled down his goggles, and waved as he dropped off Sho’s balcony.

Sho wished quietly into the darkness for Nino to get home safe.

~

Nino made it more than halfway to the City Limits before something went wrong.

He was usually pretty good about managing to avoid the Watch teams, but he was thrown off when he almost skated right through the middle of a patrol that had apparently been added recently. He prided himself on knowing the schedules of the Force; to have a team he hadn’t known about was a low blow to his ego as well as his safety. He’d barely managed to detour before stumbling across a second unexpected group, and this time he wasn’t fast enough to avoid notice.

A Force man shouted the alarm, pointing him out within seconds. Nino’s momentum was too strong to turn around or stop; all he could do was attempt to pick up more speed and dart past them before they could close in on him. But even in the split second as he drew even with them, he knew he wasn’t going to get out without a fight. Three men lifted weapons ( _When did they get firearms?_ Nino wondered) and fired.

Two missed. One did not; Nino lifted his arm instinctively to protect his face, and the projectile hit him square in the right wrist. He could feel a bone or two crack with the sheer force of the impact, and the sensation was immediately followed by an excruciating tearing of skin. Looking at the wound, he saw a marble-sized steel ball, covered in sharp, hooked barbs, clinging to his wrist where it had hit. It was vibrating against the broken bone, waves of sick pain washing over Nino as he gained some distance. They didn’t seem to be following him, and Nino didn’t have time to question this.

Roughly a mile later, his vision twisted and abruptly darkened around the edges. Nino scraped against a wall, coming to stop just in time to be violently ill. Four steps further, and his knees gave out from under him. He collapsed against a chunk of old, broken concrete wall; as his vision went completely dark, he couldn’t help but feel bad that he wasn’t going to be home for dinner after all.

~

Nino came to in significant pain. He groaned, blinking his eyes in an attempt to make them focus, but he was dizzy and nauseated and no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t clear his eyes.

Another jet of pain shot up his arm, and he could feel a hand tugging at the barb. Swearing loudly, he pushed his entire weight away from whoever was touching him, trying desperately to escape. But the touch merely moved to his shoulders, forcing him back against the wall.

Nino heard a pop, like a bottle opening, then a hiss of steam. The acrid smell of something burning hit his nose and he jerked, his head cracking against the concrete. As stars danced across his vision, he wrist suddenly burned like it was being ripped open. And then the sting of the barb was completely gone, leaving only an ache of broken bones behind.

Someone was heaving his arm over their shoulder, forcing him to stand. Nino managed it barely, feeling his stomach roll as his equilibrium tried to adjust and failed. The next ten minutes were slow-going and painful, but he was aware of being taken inside; he felt the lurch of a lift carrying him upwards; he heard the chirp of an electronic key-card lock deactivating.

Shortly after, he was being guided to sit again. It was bright, and he knew without needing to see it that he was in a bathroom. The smell of an automatic bleaching system was harsh on his nose, and he was vaguely aware of someone crouching in front of him. Suddenly the sharp smell of bleach was much, much clearer and directly under his nose, and he choked, knocking it away as his vision came back full-force.

Alert for the first time since he’d be hit, Nino’s eyes rested on the round, worried face of the graffiti artist from the Limits.

~

The last thing Ohno had expected to find on his ‘canvas’ was the boy with skates, slumped and bleeding from a ‘Barracuda’ bite. The tiny weapons were new in the force, so named because once they sunk their teeth in, they didn’t let go. Even worse, the barbs were tipped with a drug that knocked the victim out cold. The tracking device hidden inside made anyone unlucky enough to be hit with it a sitting duck.

Not even taking the time to think, Ohno pulled out a small kit from his pocket. Inside were very basic tools he’d learned to carry after seeing first hand how carelessly the Force treated their captives. Pulling out a small bottle of acid, he drizzled it across the Barracuda. It not only destroyed the tracking device inside, but made the barbed teeth retract as it shut off completely. A few drops hit the boy’s skin; it was unavoidable though, and Ohno could only do his best to treat the injuries gingerly. It was clear that the boy’s wrist had been shattered, and Ohno carefully pulled the boy to his feet.

Ohno’s building was only a few blocks away, and Ohno knew the paths of the new patrols. With care, he was able to guide them safely back to his Unit. Once inside, they stumbled to Ohno’s bathroom, where he took out the first aid kit his mother made him keep well-stocked and carefully clean out the bite. Slowly, the boy seemed to be coming around, and Ohno watched him closely as he worked. Some of the resistance generation had allergic reactions to the drug; if that happened, there would be nothing he could do. He took a moment to wave a bottle of bleach under the boy’s nose, hoping to urge him into wakefulness faster, before tucking it away and going back to the bandages.

As he knelt between the boy’s legs and prodded gently at the bones in his wrist, the boy’s other hand came up and brushed across Ohno’s cheek.

Ohno looked up, startled from his focus on the injuries. The boy was looking at him with slightly dazed, glassy eyes, but even as Ohno watched, his attention was sharpening, identifying Ohno as someone he’d encountered before.

“Hello,” Ohno said, smiling softly. The boy’s fingertips continued to stroke lightly across Ohno’s cheek.

“Did you save me?” The boy asked. He seemed slightly confused by this, wary of Ohno and his motivations.

“You saved me, once,” Ohno pointed out. “I think we’re even.”

“What’s your name?” The boy asked suddenly, as though the thought had just occurred to him. Ohno ducked his head, a bit shy.

“Ohno.”

“I’m Nino,” The boy said, not bothering to take his hand away from Ohno’s face. He seemed fascinated with the texture of Ohno’s skin under his fingertips, and as Ohno watched the boy’s eyes dart across him, he saw them settle on the single lens over his eye. Nino’s short fingers followed his gaze, tracing the edge of the glass curiously as Ohno hid a small smile and adjusted the bandages he was wrapping around Nino’s hand.

“You can see them, can’t you?” Nino asked softly, his touch dancing across the hinge of the lens.

“See what?” Ohno asked, tightening the splint he’d fixed to Nino’s wrist. The boy hissed, his eyes screwing shut for a moment against the wave of pain-induced nausea. Ohno waited for him to relax again before continuing.

“Colors,” Nino said after a moment, his gaze fixing on Ohno again. Hesitating just a moment, Ohno carefully lifted the lens up, revealing his eye without the amber filter; deep, dark blue. With it, he could see the soft clear brown of Nino’s eyes, the black of his hair mixed with yellow streaks over one temple, the pale cream of his skin, and the grey dirty smudges on his cheek and hands.

Nino sucked in a breath at the sight. He’d heard that the second generation after colorblindness had a few mutations where partial color vision happened, but only rarely did it affect the eye color itself. His own eyes were the same simple brown of his mother and sister; color-sighted, but not obvious unless he outright said he could. Ohno’s eye was a dead giveaway just by being colored itself.

His fingers traced the edges of Ohno’s eye without meaning to. Ohno sighed into the touch, his eyelids falling shut. Nino’s touch drifted from Ohno’s face down his neck, across his collar, dragging along his shoulder. It was like he was trying to learn Ohno’s shape through his hand, outlining his body.

“I’ve seen your paintings,” Nino said, barely louder than a breath. “All the colors in the world in one place…”

“Not all of them,” Ohno answered, his gaze fixing on Nino’s face. “I’ll never get them all.”

“Keep trying,” Nino said with a smile. Ohno dropped his gaze, suddenly shy, before standing.

“Can I show you something?” He asked, holding out his hand to help Nino up. Nino nodded his agreement, accepting Ohno’s hand and not bothering to let go once he was up. Ohno led him into the main room, scattered with brushes and various cups full of paints. One wall was bare, with nothing leaning against it or hanging on it. Excited, Ohno positioned Nino in front of the wall, before stepping back and hitting the light switch.

Nino sucked in a breath. Snaking across the wall were faintly glowing yellow-green vines. Every few feet, a vine bloomed into some sort of flower, and Nino automatically reached out to touch it. He was surprised to have his hand land flat against the wall, before he realized the entire thing was painted on.

“The paint isn’t quite done yet,” Ohno murmured from behind Nino. He reached over the boy’s shoulder, tracing a vine up the wall with his hand. Nino leaned back into his chest, turning his head towards Ohno’s face. Ohno swallowed, continuing with his explanation. “Right now, it’s still a slightly different color in the light. I don’t want anyone to be able to see it until it’s dark.”

“What will you paint with it?” Nino asked softly, his weight warm against Ohno’s chest.

“I don’t know yet. Maybe a tree. What do you think?” Ohno asked, turning to meet Nino’s eyes and jumping slightly at how much closer they were than he’d thought. Nino smirked at him, twisting his uninjured hand in the front of Ohno’s shirt and using it to drag him along as Nino backed up until his shoulders hit the wall. He looked up through his lashes at Ohno, silent and waiting.

Ohno placed his hands on the wall, to either side of Nino’s shoulders.

“I think you’re wondering if you should kiss me,” Nino responded, a coy smile curving across his lips.

“Should I?” Ohno breathed.

“Yes,” Nino answered easily, still smiling. Ohno only hesitated a moment more before closing the distance between them and brushing their lips together. Nino tilted his head into the kiss, easily adjusting for Ohno’s apparent inexperience. Ohno shivered when he felt Nino’s hand slide around to rest low on his back, stroking softly. And then, instinctively, Ohno’s tongue touched at Nino’s lip, requesting entrance, and Nino welcomed him in with an insistent growl. The boy’s back arched against the wall, pressing their hips together, and suddenly Ohno was intensely aware of all the places that their bodies touched; Nino was warm and solid and encouraging against him and Ohno stopped thinking about anything except the sounds he could draw from Nino’s throat.

Frustrated with the limited access the wall offered him, Ohno hooked his fingers in Nino’s belt and lead him backwards until they bumped into Ohno’s small and rumpled bed. He found himself fascinated with the curve of Nino’s shoulders as he pushed off the boy’s shirt, and he didn’t hesitate to help when Nino’s uninjured hand struggled with Ohno’s belt. Piece by piece, their clothing slid to the floor; Ohno lost track of how many small cases and belts Nino had on his body. Pressing Nino down into the mattress and slowly tracing a path up the boy’s neck with his thumb, Ohno wasn’t thinking about all the reasons this was a terrible idea.

It was exhilarating, doing something as dangerous as this. His heart was pounding ten times faster than it ever had painting, and his focus was narrowed sharply on every immediate detail: Nino’s good hand busied itself skating up the planes of Ohno’s back, tracing the muscles that bunched as he moved. Nino’s hipbone jutting into Ohno’s palm as he slid it down the boy’s lithe form. The soft gasp Nino made as Ohno dropped kisses on the three dots tattooed over his right eye.

“More,” Nino demanded breathily in Ohno’s ear, and he was all too happy to oblige, grinding down roughly with both their cocks in hand. He didn’t know what he was doing, but he knew what felt good and he knew what Nino was enjoying just by looking at the expressions flitting across the boy’s face. They were rocking together, sliding against each other, and Ohno could see hair stuck to Nino’s face with sweat. Nino was panting, forcing air into his lungs, and with each exhale a sound of pleasure escaped with it.

Nino’s nails bit into Ohno’s shoulder, and he was gone. His eyes dropped shut against his wishes and he jerked, hearing rather than feeling the moment when Nino fell after him. The boy was keening, low and drawn out, pulling Ohno’s face down to his for a hurried, sloppy kiss as they shuddered against each other.

And then as quickly as the entire affair has begun, it was over.

Ohno collapsed on his side on the bed, drained and still shaking slightly. Nino curled towards him, a pleased rumbling noise in his throat that reminded Ohno a bit of what he remembered a cat sounding like.

And then he was drifting off, a small smile curled across his face.

~

Jun paced their underground hallway, anxious and wondering where the hell Nino was. He’d promised to be home by ‘dinner’, a time which had come and passed four hours ago. Nino was a great many annoying and obnoxious things, but ‘flaky’ wasn’t one of them; if he said by dinner, he would be back by then.

Unless something had happened.

Jun growled and continued to wear a path in the mismatched carpet patches. He was trying not to think of all the horrible things that could have befallen Nino; it was far more comfortable to think about all the ways he was going to make Nino sorry for worrying him once he got home. The list was long, and growing longer with each passing minute.

“Jun-chan,” Aiba said softly from his seat on a box in the doorway to his room. Jun made another lap past him, brow furrowed deeply. “Jun-chan. Jun. MatsuJun. Mattsun. Sugar Lumps?”

Jun stopped and stared at him.

“You look like a father waiting for his daughter to come back from a date,” Aiba commented with a lopsided grin. Jun’s scowl grew, and he returned to his pacing.

“He said by dinner.”

“Maybe Sho-kun fed him.”

“He doesn’t eat out of the house, you know that as well as I do,” Jun snapped.

“He also does everything he can to keep his promises,” Aiba replied softly, his voice low and serious. Jun stopped, his arms coming up to wrap around himself tightly, and spoke in a hesitant voice that made Aiba want to jump up and hold him close. He resisted, but barely.

“Do you think something happened?” Jun asked.

“Probably,” Aiba admitted, and Jun shuddered. “But I also think that Nino knows better than to get caught again. He promised us he’d come back, so he’ll come back, right? It just might take a little longer than he thought.”

“…He’s too much of an asshole to die, huh.”

“Definitely,” Aiba agreed with a grin, holding out a hand to invite Jun closer. To his moderate surprise, Jun accepted, sitting next to him on the box and leaning against Aiba’s shoulder. Aiba squeezed his hand comfortingly.

“I hate him,” Jun said, _for making me worry_ echoing unsaid after. Aiba rested his head on Jun’s shoulder and patted his thigh.

“I miss him too,” Aiba murmured.

~

When Ohno woke up, his bed felt colder than he expected and he couldn’t remember why that was odd. Sitting up and rubbing at his eyes sleepily, he looked around his unit with some confusion. The sun had barely begun to rise, light still blocked out by the polarized glass of the windows. He could see his wall, the vines still glowing faintly, and suddenly he remembered.

The boy with skates. He’d been hurt, and Ohno had taken him back with him. In this very bed, they had—

Ohno jumped out of the sheets, pulling on the first pair of loose pants his hands could reach. His unit wasn’t big; if Nino was still here, Ohno would find him in moments. Sure enough, as he rounded the corner to the entryway, he spotted Nino crouched low on the ground something clutched tightly in his hands.

Something orange.

Ohno winced as he recognized his Force uniform. He’d stuffed it in the box as soon as he’d gotten home, as always. He noticed with significant apprehension that Nino’s hands were shaking.

“Nino?”

“This is a Force uniform,” Nino said, his voice flat and cold.

“Yes.”

“It’s yours.”

“…Yes.”

Nino stood, the cloth rumpled in his good hand as it fisted. His back was to Ohno, but Ohno didn’t need to see his face to recognize the waves of fury rolling off him. The boy turned, and Ohno noted with some surprise a look of betrayal… and hurt.

“I helped you,” Nino said, his voice hollow.

“Thank you,” Ohno said sincerely. He jumped when Nino’s usually slightly-laughing mouth curled into a snarl.

“I _take it back,_ ” Nino said, each word dripping with venom. “I should have let them catch you; they’re so much crueler when it’s one of their own, aren’t they?”

“I’m sorry,” Ohno said, feeling sick at the expressions flitting across Nino’s face; all were so at odds with the looks he’d seen last night. He hadn’t meant to hurt Nino. He hadn’t meant to keep it from him either, but Ohno did so much in the privacy of his own home that he tried to keep as separate from the Force as possible.

“Well?” Nino said, dark and furious, holding out his wrists. “What are you waiting for, a written invitation?”

Ohno blinked at him in confusion. “Waiting for what?”

“To arrest me,” Nino snapped. “You’re pretty damn clever, I’ll give you that. I let my guard down again.”

“I’m not—why would I arrest you?” Ohno asked, stepping forward to brush his fingertips along Nino’s bandaged hand. “I don’t want you caught—I broke the Barracuda so they wouldn’t find you.”

“Bullshit,” Nino spat, jerking his hand away from Ohno’s touch. “You’ve got no reason to help me unless you were trying to make me relax.”

“I wasn’t!” Ohno cried, feeling helpless anger bubble up in his stomach. “You were hurt, I couldn’t leave you, not after you helped me before.”

“So that’s it?” Nino laughed, clearly not believing a word. “You’ll just let me walk out of here to lick my wounds? Oh, but I’ll owe you, is that it? Maybe you can use me, get me to tell names and locations and plans.”

“Stop it!” Ohno snapped, and he saw Nino jump, not expecting the outburst. “Just—stop. I wanted—I tried to help you. That’s all. You don’t owe me anything, I didn’t plan anything, and if you want to leave here right now, I won’t stop you. I won’t even try.”

Nino stayed silent as Ohno deflated at the end of his speech. He looked into Ohno’s face, obviously searching for the lie in his words, but he wouldn’t find one. Ohno meant it all. He hadn’t intended for any of this to happen; he just hadn’t wanted to lose the one person he’d ever met who might, just a little, understand.

“…I’m leaving,” Nino said, and Ohno noticed for the first time that he was already wearing his skates.

“Will—“

Before Ohno could finish the question, Nino had slipped out the door and shut it behind him without looking back. Ohno’s outstretched hand dropped to his side, and all Ohno could think was that once again, he was left with nothing but an empty home and regrets.


	6. Chapter 6

When Nino tripped through the front door, Jun was right there to catch him. Just behind was Aiba, and Nino could tell by the dark circles under their eyes that they had been waiting there all night. He felt a pang of guilt when he remembered that he had spent the night rather comfortably in a warm bed.

“I’m home,” He said, waving his hand and remembering too late that it was the broken wrist. He yelped, the movement having been enough to slide bones together painfully. Jun immediately caught him by the elbow, stilling the motion and supporting Nino as the urge to crumple into a miserable ball came and passed. Jun’s free hand rested low on Nino’s back, and Nino knew he would have already been hugged if it weren’t for the rather obvious injury.

Aiba though wasn’t nearly as cautious as Jun (although equally careful) and pulled Nino in a hug as soon as Jun let go of his arm. Nino sighed, his nose tucked into Aiba’s neck.

“I’m home,” He repeated, softer and wearier. Aiba didn’t say anything; he only squeezed Nino tighter.

“What happened?” Jun demanded, his voice sharp. Nino knew better than to believe the tone; Jun had very clearly been scared. Nino smiled weakly at him over Aiba’s shoulder.

“I’m going to be staying in for a few days,” Nino said. “The Force has a new patrol schedule.”

Loosening his hold enough to lean back and look at Nino’s face, Aiba said quickly, “You got caught?! What about the Eye?!”

Aiba had nicknamed the display that tracked nearby Force the ‘All-Seeing Eye’ in the hopes it would have secret, undiscovered features he hadn’t known he was putting in. Nino held up his good wrist, confirming he still had the tool.

“They weren’t wearing trackers that the Eye could read,” He explained. It had frustrated him—even as he’d been passing out on the street, he hadn’t heard a single warning chirp of the nearby Force patrols.

“What, you think the Ment is sending their dogs out without collars now?” Jun snapped, his worry evident.

“I didn’t say that. It’s possible they’ve upgraded to a new tracker—“

“The Eye would still be able to detect them,” Aiba interrupted. “I designed it to pick up regular signals, but it should also pick up any other signal in a similar style in groups of two or more. That’s why it gets confused around the old cell phone towers that are still connected.”

“Couldn’t they have figured out a new way to track entirely?” Nino questioned. “They already upgraded from GPS; there’s no reason they couldn’t do something else.”

“There’s only so many kinds of signals to _send_ ,” Aiba said, and Nino could see the many different paths Aiba’s mind was following as he considered the situation. This was what set Aiba apart from any other creator Nino knew; Aiba wasn’t stuck looking at things from just one point of view. He pushed reality out of the picture entirely, and considered what _could_ be done, rather than what _had_ been done.

“So they’re using a different one. Why is that so—“

“Because I already thought of that!” Aiba cut him off again, grabbing Nino’s wrist and pulling the display out for inspection. “The Eye is tuned to radio, infrared, GPS, you name it. You helped me write the program, you should know exactly how much it reads without you needing to tell it to!”

“And I think they’ve upgraded.”

“What makes you so sure?” Jun said, coming in as a mediator.

“That’s not the only thing that’s new,” Nino said, gesturing to his injured hand. “They had more than stunners this time.”

“…What do you mean?” Jun asked quietly. Next to him, Aiba paled.

“They finally found a gun that won’t kill, backfire, or leave a mess behind,” Nino said darkly. “I mean, I’m relatively sure it would kill if you took a face shot, but otherwise it’s more than survivable.”

“What’s the point of a weapon that doesn’t kill you if it means you still get away?” Aiba asked softly, and Nino remembered with a sudden ache how he and Aiba had first met; a fourteen-year-old mechanical genius on the run from a Ment Academy. They’d tried to enlist him, and when that failed, they’d promised him a lab and access to all the machinery his heart desired.

Aiba had accepted, only to be informed days later that he would be placed in a weapons development team, designated to creating things that would kill only specific targets. Human ones. Weapons that would, he was told, seek out resistance members in a crowd of law abiding citizens and kill them without mercy.

Nino didn’t blame him one bit for running.

“Because the bullet is a pretty tricky one,” Nino explained bitterly. “I didn’t notice at first; it hit my wrist, broke it on impact, then the little bastard grew teeth and hung on. The teeth are drugged, and I’m relatively sure each one has a tracking device in the center. Basically, it hits you, knocks you out shortly thereafter, and tells the Force exactly where you’ve fallen moments later.”

“Barracuda,” Aiba murmured, eyes wide. Nino looked at him, surprised.

“Yeah,” He said. “How’d you know?”

“They were trying the first prototypes when I was there,” Aiba explained, and Jun automatically ran a hand soothingly up and down Aiba’s arm. “The gun part was a separate team; but the Barracuda itself was being built in the same lab I was in. They were having trouble finding a metal hard enough to stay together when fired, but soft enough to allow the tracker signals to still transmit.”

“Evidentally, they found one,” Nino said, rubbing his arm with a wince. “That thing is nasty; apparently they don’t let go until they’re deactivated, and there’s no easy way to do that when you’re unconscious.”

“How did you?” Jun asked suddenly, and Nino blinked, thrown off.

“What?”

“How did you get away?” Jun said again, his brows knitting in suspicion. “If you’d gotten away just like that, you would have been home a hell of a lot sooner.”

“Acid breaks them down,” Nino explained. “It melts the tracker and makes the teeth retract.”

“So what took you so long?” Jun insisted, and Nino made a split-second decision.

“I wasn’t out that long. I went back to Sho’s after and hid; he didn’t know I was there.”

“And the bandage?”

“Stole it, from Sho’s first aid kit. It’s big; that guy is kind of paranoid. A lot like someone else I know, actually!” Nino chirped brightly, hoping the teasing would distract Jun from the lie. Nino was pretty sure Jun could smell lies; it was the only way he could have known when Aiba used his toothbrush.

He was pretty sure Jun caught the lie this time too. But for whatever reason, he didn’t press, and Nino made no attempt to offer up the truth. Aiba looked between them, aware that something was being said (or not being said) between them and deciding to change the subject.

“But you’re more or less okay, right?” He asked, glancing at Nino’s wrist and then back at his face.

“Yeah. This was the only casualty!”

“Don’t say that,” Jun broke in, and Nino heard real fear in his voice for the first time in a long time. “Don’t ever say that.”

“Jun?” Nino asked carefully, taking a step forward. He could feel Aiba doing the same next to him.

“You were gone all night and we had no idea where you were or what happened, and you come back with a broken hand and inform us you were shot at, drugged, and nearly caught _and you expect me to laugh at it?_ ”

Aiba hugged Jun from behind as Nino caught Jun’s hand and pressed it to his cheek. Smiling softly, he shook his head into Jun’s palm.

“I’m still alive,” He said. “Seems a good enough reason to laugh to me.”

~

When Nino met Aiba, Aiba had been running. He’d been alone and scared and Nino had known just by looking at him that while Aiba had been more than smart enough to escape, he wasn’t going to be able to stay free on his own.

Aiba had come to live with Nino in the underground house then, and it had immediately gone from being ‘Nino’s house’ to ‘our home’. Nino was glad for it; he didn’t like how empty it was with just him.

Jun had arrived a few months later. Like Aiba, Jun had run away; he’d been sent to one of the most prestigious Ment Academies in the country. His marks were all excellent, and Jun excelled in every subject.

And then one day, Jun’s favorite history teacher was arrested on undisclosed charges. The man was kind and brilliant, and he and Jun had spent hours in his office talking over tea. No matter how many questions Jun asked, he always had an answer. He encouraged Jun to speculate and come up with his own theories, and then together they would research and try to find information to back them up.

He was taken straight from their classroom, and dragged bodily out the door. A Ment-appointed substitute calmly continued the lesson in a bored, flat tone, and no matter how many times Jun asked, no one would tell him where the teacher had been taken, or why. Two weeks later, Jun was informed he had been left a considerable sum of money in the teacher’s last will and testament. No one bothered to gently tell Jun of his mentor’s death; they merely handed him the inheritance papers to sign and sent him back to class.

Jun left that night.

Nino and Aiba had liked Jun from the start. They’d all ended up crouched in the same dark hiding spot as a patrol passed, and Aiba invited Jun to live with them the minute they found out he had no place to go. Jun agreed, and bought The Place through legal channels with the money from his teacher. Aside from being an Academy dropout, he was careful not to directly associate himself with any illegal actions. He’d even managed to keep some ties to old Academy friends that had since graduated to hold positions in the Ment itself.

Jun and Aiba didn’t know Nino’s story for several years. Then one night, when they were all in the area of seventeen years old, enough alcohol was passed around between the three of them that Nino (the smallest and with the lowest tolerance) was telling them his story as though it was spilling out of him.

Nino told them about his family. His parents had lived in a small house in the City proper. His mother had been a writer; mostly magazines, although she had a few novels that she was always looking to publish. His father had been (to Aiba and Jun’s surprise) a fairly low-level Ment worker. His sister was born into a relatively normal home, and himself two years later.

And then shortly after his sister entered kindergarten, something changed. His father spent less and less time at home; the times he was, he was short-tempered and irritable. His mother’s articles were getting gradually more confident and outspoken until they received a written warning from the Ment ordering her to stop writing immediately, or risk punishment.

Shortly after Nino’s fourth birthday, his father sold them out for a cushy promotion to the Force. The Ment put out a warrant for his mother’s arrest, and it was only through the warning of a writer friend that she managed to gather her children and escape to the City Limits. She’d found the underground home Nino, Aiba and Jun now lived in; she’d done her best to make it a home.

His sister was caught first; she was twelve, taken on a short walk home from the latest food distribution location. He never found out where she was taken to.

His mother was caught three years later when a neighbor’s home caught fire and she left to help. He’d seen her being dragged into the Force truck and ‘subdued’: beaten until she was still and unresponsive. He knew without needing to ask that she was dead, and all he had been able to do was watch from his hiding place. He was thirteen.

Nino had been living alone in the house for almost a year when he met Aiba. The first night after Aiba moved in, Nino had climbed into his bed with him and curled around him, sniffling into the crook of Aiba’s neck.

Aiba had known then exactly how lonely Nino was.

~

The last thing Sho had been expecting was a phone call.

“This is Jun.”

“Oh god,” Sho said, sitting down hard. “Please tell me he made it home.”

“He made it home,” Jun confirmed. “Eventually. Not without injury through.”

Instantly, Sho was listing off every instance of Force brutality he had ever witnessed or ever read in his mind. His photographic memory meant that he knew with stunning accuracy how many ways the Force patrols could cripple a person without killing them; ether that, or they _did_ kill him.

“I’m sorry,” Sho said sincerely. “I tried to get him to stay, but—“

“So he didn’t come back?” Jun said, and Sho was surprised to hear a note of resignation in his voice.

“Come—no. I told him he should, if he didn’t think he’d make it, but when I didn’t see him, I just assumed he made it,” Sho explained, confused. Why would Jun think Nino had come back?

“I thought as much,” Jun said, sighing. “Thanks.”

They hung up, and Sho sat staring at the phone for nearly ten minutes, trying to understand why Jun had bothered calling in the first place.

~

Jun set the phone in its old-fashioned cradle, staring at it pensively. He’d come to The Place to make the call; he didn’t want to risk Nino overhearing. As he’d suspected; Nino had lied. He said Sho hadn’t known he was there, but if Sho had told him to return, there was no reason for Nino to hide himself. The story didn’t make sense no matter how Jun looked at it; the only conclusion was that Nino had, for whatever reason, lied about where he spent the night.

There was another piece that didn’t fit; Nino said he was drugged. And then apparently woke up shortly after of his own volition, managed to remove the Barracuda (with acid, he’d said) and then disappeared for the rest of the night.

Jun didn’t know why Nino would keep the truth from them. Leaning his hip against the countertop, he couldn’t help but feel betrayed.

“Satisfied?” Aiba asked, and Jun looked up to the doorway. Aiba approached him, leaning next to him and giving him a look that clearly said he knew what Jun had done.

“He didn’t go to Sho’s,” Jun said softly.

“Nope,” Aiba agreed. “But we knew that.”

“I don’t get it,” Jun said, a frown deepening across his features. “Why would he lie to us?”

“It’s Nino,” Aiba reminded him with a shrug. “He only lies for good reasons, right?”

“He doesn’t usually lie to us,” Jun growled.

“Sure he does,” Aiba corrected. “All the time.”

“Like when?” Jun asked, raising an eyebrow skeptically. Aiba slid sideways enough for their shoulders to brush together and smiled.

“When you ask him if he’s scared.”

“…He says he’s never scared.”

“Exactly,” Aiba said. “Same as when you ask him about that year he lived alone, or the times he was arrested. Not a single answer he gives is the entire truth and we all know it.”

“That’s different,” Jun said. “He just doesn’t want to bring up painful memories.”

“Isn’t it possible that’s the case now?” Aiba asked, running a hand up and down Jun’s arm. “Maybe he just wants to forget about it. He’s back and safe; we don’t really need to know exactly what happened, do we?”

Jun sighed and rubbed his face with both hands. Aiba had a point, but Jun couldn’t help but feel frustrated. He hated not knowing more than anything in the world; not knowing where his friends were, if they were safe, if they needed him.

“He’d tell us if he needed to, I guess,” Jun amended. Aiba waited for the expression on Jun’s face to soften before pulling him into a hug, his fingers twisting in Jun’s hair.

“Definitely.”


	7. Chapter 7

Nino slept for a good twenty-eight hours once home. It wasn’t even that he was particularly tired; his wrist did hurt (less, with Jun waking him up every six hours to give him more painkillers) but mostly he didn’t want to think. Thinking brought up what had happened, what had gone wrong, and why he couldn’t bring himself to utterly hate Ohno for his betrayal. He wanted to so badly, but all he could do was hate Ohno’s involvement, rather than the man himself.

It confused him and gave him headaches, so he slept.

Aiba didn’t try to pull him out of his funk, for once. He went to his lab as usual, and came home sometimes to curl up around Nino and nap with him. Jun made sure he had plenty to drink and offered him food every time he was given the medicine, but Nino always brushed him off.

He wasn’t hungry, or hurt, or even tired. He just didn’t want to exist for a little while.

At some point, he put the headphones from his rebuilt mp3 player in his ears, starting the music and letting it lull him in a gentle sleep. The sounds of years past soothed him into forgetting how wrong absolutely everything was; instead, he could dream of a time before he was born, when at least not everything that made a person happy would end in imprisonment.

~

Ohno had cleaned up his unit a bit, using the soothing motions to calm himself down. He had wanted to chase after Nino, but he’d said he wouldn’t stop him, so he didn’t. He’d watched the boy leave with such an indescribable heaviness in his heart, that it was all he could do not to demand the boy return.

He sealed paint cups, stacking them neatly next to a pile of test canvases. He straightened the bedclothes (carefully avoiding thinking in detail about the night before) and put away his few dishes in the kitchen. Ohno almost never ate here; his mother fed him far better than he could feed himself.

Once satisfied, Ohno put on his shoes and eyeglass and tucked his keycards in his pocket, before heading to his mother’s unit. He knocked politely, waiting for her invitation in. But she didn’t answer; maybe she was already cooking, and couldn’t hear him? So Ohno used his own key to enter, kicking off his shoes in the doorway.

“Mom?” he called out, but was met only with ringing silence.

And darkness; every light was out.

Ohno may have hated the Force, but he had been trained to be in it for far too long to suppress his instincts. He pressed his back against the wall, automatically lowering himself and shifting his balance to allow for sudden movement.

Silently, he crept from room to room, searching every dark corner and every hidden alcove for any sign of his mother’s presence.

There was none.

Unwilling to believe his own fears, Ohno made himself a pot of tea. He sat at his mother’s clean kitchen table with a cup cradled between his hands and waited for her to return from whatever shopping trip she must have gone on. Her errand couldn’t last forever.

As dawn broke the next morning to find him still seated, the cup of tea long since gone cold, Ohno was forced to accept that his mother was not coming back.

~

Jun finally lost patience with Nino’s mood halfway through the second day.

“Come on,” he said as he tossed a sweater at Nino’s head. “You’re helping out in the bar today.”

Nino groaned, but found he had no real reason not to do as Jun ordered, so he pulled the oversized sweater on and stuck his thumbs through the holes he’d worn in the sleeves. They hung low on his hands, and the collar draped wide across his shoulders, almost sliding off. Jun adjusted it on him, his thumbs padding lightly across Nino’s pale clavicle. The sweater was large enough to nearly slide right off his shoulder.

“Is it busy?” Nino asked, a bit sulky.

“I suppose,” Jun answered. Nino frowned, but followed meekly after him as they went down the tunnel to The Place. Once emerging from the back entrance, Jun immediately put on his apron; Nino tied a spare half-apron loosely around his waist.

“The new patrols have everyone on edge,” Jun murmured to him, voice low. “Just keep your eyes and ears open.”

“You think they’re watching?”

“I think a bunch of jumpy drunks are prone to starting trouble,” Jun commented. “I don’t want it happening here.”

“If you were looking for a bouncer, you should have found Aiba,” Nino muttered darkly.

“You’ve seen the patrols, and you’ve got a good way with people,” Jun said, and Nino turned away, slightly embarrassed by the compliment. “You can calm them down better than Aiba right now.”

So Nino worked. He flitted from table to table, from group to group at the bar, listening to their worries and concerns and doing his best to relax them. One man expressed fear for his family; Nino speculated that the Barracuda, at least, was probably not a weapon they would turn on a child. An older woman ranted angrily over her third Long Island Ice Tea about how the patrol had completely thrown off her shopping schedule. Nino assured her he’d try to learn the new times as soon as possible and spread the word.

A group at the bar asked to see his wound; one older man sucked in his breath at the sight.

“I was a doctor, years ago,” he said softly, cradling Nino’s wrist in his hand. “If you hadn’t gotten this seen to right away, it would have been a lot worse.”

Nino withdrew his hand with a tight smile. “I know.”

As the night wore on, the kinds of people that gathered in the bar changed a bit. They went from everyday, slightly oppressed citizens just looking for a place to relax, to the sorts of people that burned with a barely repressed anger just under the surface, always just on the edge of lashing out. Nino was best with these sorts of patrons; he seemed to know instinctively how to talk to them. He could get them to release their built-up rage in short, sharp bursts without encouraging them towards exploding. He’d talked people out of a lot of different rebellions over the years; something Jun always appreciated.

Towards the end of the night, there was only one person in the bar besides Jun and Nino. Toma was a regular; he was about the same age as they were and well-liked. Toma had an easy-going sort of personality, but he wasn’t afraid to speak up, either. Jun went around to the stool-side of the bar, and the two of them delved deep into a conversation about recent economic trends and whether or not the Ment was lying about those, too. Nino busied himself with cleaning; he liked the soothing, repetitive motions of wiping down tables and collecting dishes.

After about half an hour, Toma said goodbye, careful to look out the door before stepping out into the street. Nino sat on the bar, his feet dangling.

He heard the door click open, and he looked up, expecting to see Toma peeking back in.

Instead, he found himself staring into one brown eye, and one he knew to be blue underneath the tinted lens. Nino jumped to his feet, immediately defensive and ready to run. He thumped his hand on the bar twice, hard; Jun darted out from the back room, responding to their agreed-upon danger signal.

“Can I help you?” Jun asked carefully, low and dangerous. Nino edged behind the bar, the betrayed anger bubbling up in his chest again at the sight of Ohno’s face.

“I…” Ohno started, glacing at Nino, then focusing on Jun. “I hope so.”

“We can’t help you,” Nino spat. Jun ignored him.

“What did you need?” he asked mildly, one hand closing around Nino’s good wrist in warning.

“I need help finding someone,” Ohno said softly, his expression tight and unreadable.

“Why don’t you ask your—“ Nino started, but Ohno cut him off sharply.

“I’m pretty sure she was arrested yesterday morning,” he said, continuing to speak to Jun. “I couldn’t tell you what for, though.”

“Who?”

“My mother,” Ohno said softly, as though it pained him to even say out loud. “They’d been following her for a few days, and then she just… didn’t come home.”

“Why us?” Jun asked seriously.

“Because,” Ohno responded, looking straight at Nino. “The Ment took her. I want her back. Asking them to let her go isn’t going to do anything.”

“Not even for a member of their Force?” Nino said, full of mock-sweetness. Jun’s hand tightened around his wrist, and Nino knew he would shortly be forced to answer several of Jun’s prying questions.

“Not for me,” Ohno said. “Especially not for me.”

~

“So your mother went shopping and never came back?” Jun clarified. Ohno nodded. His hands were wrapped tightly around a mug of hot tea; Jun’s comforting behavior didn’t escape Nino’s notice.

“She’s pretty good about following the new laws,” Ohno said. Nino frowned at the word ‘new’; the Ment had been in power long over a decade now, and their laws could hardly be called new. “At home she wasn’t so great, but they were mostly harmless things like making guests take off their shoes. They’ve overlooked her until now.”

“And why’s that?” Jun asked.

“Because I was in the Force,” Ohno answered simply, and Nino growled under his breath.

“And… you’re not now?” Jun said, raising an eyebrow. It wasn’t easy to ‘leave’ the Force.

“I’m not going back,” Ohno said. “I can’t.”

“What about your unit?” Nino asked, and Jun turned to him with a look of confusion. “All your possessions, all your pieces… you’ll just abandon them?”

“Those are replaceable,” Ohno said as though this was the most obvious thing in the world. “My mother is not. Going back will only make me a target, and I can’t be caught now.”

“Do you have somewhere to go?” Jun snorted, clearly not a firm believer in Ohno’s survival skills. His suspicions were confirmed when Ohno merely shrugged, unconcerned with his own well-being.

Nino wanted to hate him. But he couldn’t turn Ohno away, either. Not when someone else’s life was on the line. Ohno wanted to rescue his mother; Nino had never been given the opportunity to save his own. Part of him wondered if this was his chance to make up for it.

“You’ll stay with us,” Nino said, and he could feel Jun’s surprise in his grip. “If she’s alive, we’ll find her. If she’s dead, you’re on your own; we aren’t into revenge.”

“And when we find her,” Ohno asked, pointedly ignoring the implication that she might not be. “You’ll help me rescue her?”

“No,” Jun said. “We locate. We don’t save anyone. That’s up to you.”

“Thank you,” Ohno said sincerely, and Nino wondered not for the first time why he was so weak.

~

They set Ohno up on their beaten couch. Nino avoided him as much as possible, and found himself ducking around Jun just as often. It was easier to find excuses to leave than it was to explain why he had offered sanctuary to a man he clearly disliked.

But that night, he found himself unable to sleep no matter how he curled in his blankets. After a few hours of tossing and turning, he finally gave up and went to the kitchen, rummaging through their limited pantry for something to snack on. Finding a hunk of bread that hadn’t yet been put to use, Nino shuffled back down towards his room.

“Nino?” a voice called out softly in the dark. He froze, then remember Ohno’s presence in their living room.

“What?”

Ohno appeared in the shadows in front of him, his face tired and lined with worry. Nino took a vicious bite from the bread, tearing into it with every amount of venom he was feeling.

“Can’t sleep?”

“No,” Nino said shortly. Ohno shifted, and Nino found himself needing an explanation.

“Why did you come to us?”

Ohno didn’t answer immediately. He seemed to be considering something, weighing it in his mind and carefully choosing how he said it. Finally, he stepped forward, pressing Nino back against the wall and said, “Because I want to trust you.”

“Don’t,” Nino said. He wasn’t sure what he was referring to, but his eyes closed and he sucked in a breath at Ohno’s closeness.

“I’m sorry,” Ohno said softly, and Nino didn’t need to be looking to know that Ohno’s lips were mere centimeters from his own. “I never intended to hurt you. I’m really sorry.”

Nino said nothing.

Ohno closed the distance between them, kissing Nino with such soft hesitancy that Nino almost didn’t notice. Almost. He planted his hands on Ohno’s shoulders and shoved as hard as he could, knowing that if he didn’t do it now, he wouldn’t have the willpower to do it later. Ohno hit the opposite wall with a thud, and Nino opened his eyes, wrapping his arms around himself tightly.

“Don’t,” Nino repeated, and this time there was no misunderstanding about what he was referring to. He turned his back to Ohno and went down the hall to Aiba’s room without looking back.

Aiba didn’t wake up when Nino entered, but he did rouse when Nino curled around his back in the bed. He rolled over and nudged Nino closer, winding his fingers through the boy’s hair soothingly.

“Nino?” Aiba asked quietly. Nino pressed closer.

“Leave it,” he said, his voice sounding every bit as tired as he felt. Aiba didn’t press; he just tucked the blankets carefully around them and kept petting Nino’s hair until they both fell asleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Jun found it a bit hard to concentrate on breakfast the next morning. He and Nino usually traded mornings (Aiba left alone in the kitchen was a bit like playing Russian Roulette with your digestive system) but Nino hadn’t gotten out of bed at a decent hour in two days, and Jun didn’t want to wait for him.

Fresh ingredients were rare. With animals banned in the city, even simple things like eggs were difficult to get. As a result, Jun was stuck working with a variety of preserved dishes brought back to moderate hydration thanks to a machine Aiba had invented. All Jun needed to do was place the dried fish in a tray inside the unassuming black box, and with a push of a button, it would rehydrate it until one could almost pretend it was fresh.

Today he’d settled for rice, fish, and some miso soup he’d obtained through a secret channel (which was actually just a very nice old woman who had a basement full of the stuff in jars.) But Jun was repeatedly distracted by the eyes watching his every move.

Ohno had followed him into the kitchen, padding around quietly like a dog waiting patiently to be fed. He hadn’t said anything other than greeting Jun good morning and inquiring with a certain amount of hopefulness, “Breakfast?” He also didn’t seem to have any idea how to cook for himself, which Jun discovered when he tried to make Ohno help with the miso.

“What—wait! That’s too much!” Jun yelped, catching Ohno’s hand before he dumped the entire jar of dried seaweed into the pot. Ohno had seemed genuinely apologetic as Jun banished him to a stool at the counter, and sat quietly with his hands in his lap, staring at the food as though he could will it into his mouth just by looking hard enough.

“Keep staring,” Jun commented blandly. “I might do a trick.”

“Oh,” Ohno said, blinking at him and then ducking his head a bit sheepishly. “Sorry. It looks good.”

“It’s miso,” Jun said. “Nothing fancy.”

“But it looks really good,” Ohno repeated, and Jun was momentarily struck by how completely sincere he was in the statement.

Ohno kept confusing Jun like that. The day before, in the bar, he’d been serious and intense and a touch desperate. Nino, for reasons he wasn’t divulging, didn’t trust him one drop. And at the time, Jun had not quite been ready to trust him either; Ohno had given off an air of a man with no limits. He had only goals, with no care to how they were accomplished. As much as Jun didn’t trust him, he had been forced to respect Ohno’s dedication.

But today, Ohno seemed completely different. Simple, obedient, harmless. He was simultaneously like a very small child and a very old man, and Jun couldn’t picture him doing anything remotely illegal like this.

“Go wake up Nino,” Jun instructed. “By the time he actually drags his ass out, breakfast will be done.”

Ohno balked. “I don’t think I should…”

“Why not?” Jun insisted. “You’re just as capable. Although if he lifts his arm, duck before he has a chance to punch.”

“Nino… doesn’t like me,” Ohno said quietly.

“Nino doesn’t like anyone first thing in the morning.”

“He doesn’t like me at any time,” Ohno amended. Jun turned the heat on the stove down, frowning. At first, he’d suspected Nino knew something about Ohno he wasn’t telling. Now, it seemed more than something had happened between them.

“What exactly _happened_ with you two?” Jun asked seriously, bracing his hands on the countertop and fixing Ohno with the same look he used when Aiba was ignoring an injury.

“Don’t ask,” Ohno said, his face the very picture of regret. “Please.”

~

Nino awoke to Aiba’s hand stroking through his hair again. It was soothing, and he curled closer to Aiba and kept his eyes shut, hoping it would continue. Aiba chuckled at the motion, low and still slightly rough from sleep, but his petting continued.

“Just so we’re clear,” Aiba murmured. “I know you’re awake.”

Nino made a small noise of recognition, pressing his head harder into Aiba’s hand.

“You’re making Jun worry, you know,” Aiba continued. “He’s convinced you sold yourself on the street corner that night in exchange for a bed. Or set something on fire.”

“I only did that once,” Nino protested.

“Prostitution?”

“No, arson,” Nino corrected, poking Aiba in the ribs. “You were there, you should remember.”

“Oh, right.” Aiba did remember. He remembered the small house that had once been the residence of a woman who played piano like it was all that kept her going day to day. Nino had spent hours with her, carefully learning the notes and how to make his hands play in harmony together across the keys.

And then one day, they arrived to find her gone and a Force notice stuck to her door.

“They’re going to destroy it,” Nino said with the surety of a boy who had spent most of his life watching the Ment ruin everything he’d ever come to enjoy. “I’m not going to let them kill it.”

“How?”

“I’ll kill it myself.”

Aiba had watched as Nino lit the four corners of the house, and they’d stood side by side for the next seven hours as it burned to the ground.

“Nino,” Aiba said softly, the memory fading and his arms dropping around Nino’s waist. “Whatever happened, you can tell us.”

Nino shifted, sitting up in the bed. Aiba watched the expression flit across his face as he weighed something over in his mind. It was times like these when Aiba was struck by the strange depth to Nino; sometimes, everything he was thinking was tucked away, hidden behind a carefully unrevealing mask of confidence and strength. And then others, like now, his doubts and fears played across his eyes as openly as if he were outright saying them.

Aiba was sure that he and Jun were the only ones who ever saw him like this.

“I made a mistake,” Nino said finally. “I trusted someone I shouldn’t have.”

“Did they hurt you?” Aiba asked, his worry spiking at the way Nino seemed to crumple in on himself.

“I don’t—yes. But not—not intentionally, I don’t think,” Nino said.

“Are you okay?” Aiba asked, sitting up and brushing the hair out of Nino’s eyes.

“Yes,” Nino said firmly.

Aiba smiled at him, and wasn’t surprised when Nino moved forward to lean against his chest. Aiba wrapped his arms around Nino and held him tightly for a moment; he knew that Nino needed things like this. Reassurances only meant things to him if they came with some signal of physicality. A hug, simply put, could not be faked.

“Please tell Jun that so that he stops looking at everyone that goes near you like he’s going to knife them quietly in the night,” Aiba said seriously. Nino laughed, his nose tucked against Aiba’s collarbone.

“But I like the way they squeak!” he said.

“Also so he’ll stop worrying,” Aiba amended. He could feel Nino’s guilt in the way he pressed closer.

“Okay.”

~

 

Breakfast was relatively uneventful; Ohno wolfed down his portion almost as fast as Aiba, and then made forlorn looks at Jun’s plate until Jun scraped some off his own plate for Ohno to devour. Nino stayed quiet, picking at his meal and eating just enough to keep Jun from following after him with a fork, before excusing himself to his room. As soon as he heard Aiba volunteer to take Ohno on a tour of his lab, Nino returned to the kitchen.

“Jun?” he called softly, hugging himself tightly. Jun looked up from the container he was sealing.

“Look,” Nino said as he went over to stand next to Jun, taking another container and closing it, keeping his hands busy. “I’m—I’m not okay. I mean, I’m not hurt or anything,” he added at Jun’s frown. “I’m just—I made a mistake and it’s bothering me, but I’ll be okay. Eventually. Soon.”

Jun gave him A Look.

“Punching someone isn’t going to help though,” Nino stated, and Jun’s shoulders relaxed somewhat.

“Anything I should know about?” Jun asked carefully.

“Man, it’s really driving you crazy that I won’t say, huh,” Nino commented brightly, and Jun resisted to urge to strangle him.

“Yes,” he answered seriously, and Nino sobered. He stayed silent for a moment, neatening containers on the countertop, before finally speaking.

“Ohno saved me from the Force,” he admitted softly. Jun had the forethought to set the container in his hands on the counter before prompting Nino further.

“So of course,” Jun said dryly. “You hate him.”

“He found me, removed the Barracuda, dragged me back to his house, took care of my wrist, and woke me up.”

“The whole part where you hate him is still not making much sense,” Jun commented.

“I got carried away,” Nino said softly, and after a beat, Jun realized what he meant by that. He’d known Nino a very long time, and knew that for all his various affairs, each one was prompted by a very real and sincere affection and trust for who ever he was with.

“You slept with him.” It was not a question.

“I enjoyed it. A lot. And then I woke up and started looking around and found a Force uniform by the front door,” Nino said, his face twisting into an expression that Jun had only seen a handful of times before, all when he regretted something. “He never once said he was Force. Not a single damn time.”

“Do you think he was trying to trap you?”

“I—don’t know. I really don’t. But he could have, and it would have been easy. I played right into his hands, Jun. I’m damn lucky that I walked out of there,” Nino said, clenching his fists tightly.

“You are,” Jun agreed. “But considering that you can’t exactly undo it, don’t you think you should just let it go already?”

“Jun,” Nino drawled. “You’re still kicking yourself for the color you painted the walls in the Place, and that was four years ago.”

“I never said I was a good example of moving on,” Jun replied gracefully.

“…I can’t trust him,” Nino said softly. “As much as—“

“As you want to,” Jun filled in.

“I can’t. He lied.”

“He did not exactly lie to you, you realize.”

“It was lying by omission,” Nino insisted stubbornly. “Considering the rather obvious nature of my profession and the rather unrelenting nature of his, he should have mentioned that he might end up arresting me one of these days.”

“I think you may be giving that man a bit too much credit,” Jun said. “I get the feeling we are lucky he knows right from left half the time.”

“Don’t tell Aiba the details,” Nino said suddenly. “I don’t want him to know.”

“He wouldn’t—“

“I know he wouldn’t,” Nino interrupted. “That doesn’t mean I want to tell him, alright?”

Jun stacked his container neatly on top of Nino’s.

“Alright.”

~

Nino went back to Sho’s that night, complete with a new set of wristguards which, Aiba assured him, were lined with steel. A bit heavy, but 100% guaranteed to block a Barracuda bite. Also good for punching people in the head.

Ohno had watched the exchange silently, but stopped Nino before he left with a hand on his elbow.

“Does it feel okay?” he asked with genuine concern. “Your wrist.”

“Fine,” Nino replied, but the statement lacked the same venom it might have had a day previously. He still wasn’t sure what to do with Ohno, but at least he didn’t quite hate himself so much over it anymore.

Nino was only slightly surprised when Sho joined him in the book room.

“Are you okay?” he asked immediately, and Nino wondered how he had managed to befriend so many god damn _mothers._

“I have been better,” he admitted. “But I am alive and also not in prison, which is always a good way to be, I feel.”

“Maybe we should call this whole thing off,” Sho said, fingering the spine of a book.

“No. Absolutely not,” Nino snapped back.

“It’s not worth your life,” Sho responded.

“This _is_ my life,” Nino said, rounding on Sho, his expression dangerous. “I have been living like this for as long as I can clearly remember. I have been fighting against the only oppression I have ever known for a cause I wasn’t even born in time to witness. I risk my neck over and over again to preserve something that most people are more than happy to _forget._ ”

“Why?” Sho asked, fascinated by the sheer will in Nino’s words.

“Because my mother did. And because it’s the only thing I know how to do,” Nino said as though it was completely logical.

“I admire your resolve,” Sho said. “But I’m a bit concerned about your priorities.”

“Join the club,” Nino answered, shoving a book into his bag.


	9. Chapter 9

Nino ran. His feet smacked the concrete, bare, and he could feel sharp chunks of stone cutting into the soles as he tore down the street. He ran and he sucked in air and he ran and that was all there was, all he had time to think about, all he had time to recognize. Fear pounded through his head and body, with every nerve singing out to run until he fell. He could feel his feet being torn open but he couldn't stop, couldn't even cry out without giving up a precious gasp of breath he wouldn't be able to regain.

Everything was grey. Miles and miles of endless cold and unfeeling grey. The sky, the street, the people he passed by. People with blank faces and blank hearts and blank minds. Grey goals and grey words and grey, meaningless lives that would turn into grey and empty deaths, like ash that is simply blown away at the end of the day with not a thought to what it once was. They left no more a mark than anything else in this vast expanse of emptiness.

He summoned the courage to look back over his shoulder.

The only drag of color in this grey was the trail of his bloody footprints on the pavement, stretching farther than he could see and growing longer with every desperate lurch forward as he continued to run and run.

 _This is it,_ Nino thought. _This is the only thing I will leave behind to even show I was here at all._

He fell to his knees, his legs giving out under him. He screamed curses, placing his hands flat on the pavement and pushing, trying to force his body forward. Something, anything. He couldn't stop. He'd die. Dropping down and sucking in air, Nino hunched over and felt every inch of himself as sharp, stinging pain.

Nino looked up. He was in a room. The floor, walls and ceiling were plain, smooth, cold and unfeeling concrete. He was dressed in plain white cotton, as empty and void of personal warmth as everything else.

"Name," an electric voice inquired.

In the corner, Nino could see a single panel. It featured a keypad with three buttons, a glass lens, and a speaker. The buttons were all glossy black and behind a solid barrier, but he knew. One called more guards, more brutal guards, guards for beating in discipline and beating out hope and life. One put the entire cell into total lockdown. No people, no lights, no food or water. Only him and cold grey walls.

And one button opened the door.

"Name," the electric voice repeated, but Nino wasn't listening. He was pushing himself off the floor ( _when had he gotten to small? Wasn't he taller than this? Wasn't he older than this?_ ) and gone to the panel. He beat on the barrier with his child's hands, over and over and over.

Blood flowed from cuts on his hands and his feet stung. The barrier fractured, and the black buttons were washed with crimson.

Three buttons. One chance.

"Name," the electric voice called, but Nino knew it didn't care one bit about his name. He pushed the button in the middle.

And suddenly, hands closed around his body. Hands on his wrists, hands over his eyes, hands over his throat. He couldn't see, he couldn't move, he couldn't breathe. Everything in his awareness faded to a dark, flat grey.

Nino screamed.

~

Ohno was the only one home. Or in the house, anyway. He tried not to think about what it meant that he kept having to correct himself on that; this wasn't home. Not his.

Aiba had sent him back from his homemade lab with a few jars and pigment materials, promising to hunt down something for Ohno to use as a canvas. He couldn't do much else to find his mother on his own, and sitting around the house was driving him insane. Instead, he could lose himself in the careful process of mixing paint; Ohno hoped he could recreate his glow in the dark paint at some point.

There were slightly odd sounds coming from down the hall, and Ohno got up from his task in the kitchen to investigate. Curiosity drew him from his seat, but concern led him to start to run when he recognized the sound: gasping sobs. He was level with Nino's doorway when the scream ripped its way out of the boy's throat.

Three steps into the room, and Ohno could see Nino. Or most of him; Nino was thrashing violently in his blankets, still screaming and choking out sobs. Ohno forced his way through Nino's movements, tearing off blankets until he finally found _Nino_. In one smooth motion, Ohno had pulled Nino hard against his chest and held him tightly. At first, Nino's distress increased; he snarled and tried to push Ohno off and away. But Ohno didn't let go, and suddenly Nino seemed to become aware of his surroundings.

With a small, heartbreaking whimper, he collapsed into Ohno's chest and wept.

Ohno stroked Nino's hair softly, rocking him back and forth and making no attempts to stop the tears. Nino was clinging to him like he was afraid Ohno was going to turn to dust under his fingers, and even though Ohno knew that in any other state of mind, Nino wouldn't get anywhere near this close, he couldn't help but feel that any comfort he could give was worth it. He had no idea what had set Nino off, and it certainly seemed more powerful that a mere nightmare, but he wasn't about to ask unless Nino calmed down.

"I'm going to die," Nino said, so quietly Ohno almost didn't hear him. "And when I do, nothing will change. Nothing will have been accomplished. Everything I did, everyone I lost, will have been for nothing."

"That's not true," Ohno said, but Nino seemed to only get angrier at this response.

"Show me one thing that I will leave behind different than I found it!" Nino snapped, everything in his face daring Ohno to prove him wrong.

"Me," Ohno said simply.

"…You?" Nino repeated, taken aback.

"I didn't know what it meant to resist. To defend. To do anything to change what was happening," Ohno explained. "I took everything they said just as it was. The Force or your freedom. The Ment or your mother's life. Our way, or nothing at all."

Ohno met Nino's eyes, and Nino once again felt his conviction about Ohno's motives shake under the sincerity he saw there.

"I let them take everything from me and I let them convince me there was no other way," Ohno said. "But you have never believed them, and since meeting you, I never will again."

Nino stared at him, searching for something to continue hiding from. But there was nothing in Ohno except truth and loss and a desire to save the only thing that had ever mattered to him. Ohno may have hurt Nino in the past, but here and now he had done nothing to break Nino's trust. Whoever Ohno had once been, the man in front of him was a thousand times more real than the man who wore the uniform.

"I was arrested three times," Nino said, his voice leaving his mouth flat and dry. "Each time, I was beaten until I couldn't remember my own name. Each time, I found a way out. Each time, I swore I'd never be caught again."

Shaking, Nino's voice turned small and scared.

"I've run out of lives," he said. "I'm going to die this time."

"You won't," Ohno answered. "There are too many people who would die to save you."

"So I'll just keep losing people so I can go on?!" Nino said, his voice breaking.

"As long as we keep fighting, we'll keep losing," Ohno said. "But if we don't try, we can't win."

"And if everyone leaves me again?" Nino asked. "If the only thing left is me?"

"That won't happen," Ohno insisted.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because they love you too much to leave you behind," Ohno explained. When Nino simply wrapped his arms around Ohno's neck and clung, he said nothing. He just held him back just as tightly.

"I still don't trust you," Nino whispered against Ohno's jaw.

"That's okay," Ohno said. "I'll wait."

~

When Nino stopped shaking, he and Ohno returned to the kitchen. Nino didn't want to leave Ohno's side for fear of losing this strange newfound safety. Ohno, in his mind, carried so many different things at once: betrayal, mystery, attraction, comfort, honesty, strength, color. Nino couldn't decide which ones to believe, but he knew which ones he wanted to.

"Ohno," Nino asked suddenly. "Can you draw tattoos?"

"Eh?" Ohno answered, blinking. "Like your dots?" He gestured to the three dots above Nino's right eye. Brushing his fingertips across them, Nino nodded. He'd done those with Aiba's help; each one represented an arrest.

"Different," Nino said. "Like a picture or something."

"I guess I could," Ohno said as he considered it. "If I had the right ink and tools. What did you have in mind?"

"A kanji," Nino said. "Something colorful."

"Kanji?" Ohno asked, looking worried. "I was kind of bad at kanji in school."

"I'll draw it on paper for you," Nino said. "You can copy it."

Ohno agreed, and they hunted down the fairly primitive electric needle Nino had helped Aiba build. Ohno used the pigments he'd been playing with and mixed according to how he guessed it should work. Nino picked the brightest, sunniest yellow Ohno had, and secretly, Ohno thought it suited him.

"Here's the kanji," Nino said, pushing the paper towards Ohno. It was the symbol for 'storm'.

"Every revolution hits a point where it is carried on by its own momentum," Nino explained softly. "It can only keep moving forward until it finishes. Just like a storm does."

Ohno nodded his understanding, and they went to work.

~

When Jun came home that night, he took one look at the large bandage on Nino's upper right arm and immediately took Nino's chin in his hand. Forcing Nino to meet his eyes, Jun spoke with a surprising amount of tenderness.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice leaving no room for untruths. Nino smiled at him, a touch tired, but otherwise unhurt. He peeled back the edge of the bandage, exposing the kanji (still scabbed, but recognizable) to Jun.

"I asked Ohno to help me with it," Nino explained softly. "It's fine."

Jun looked at Nino's arm, and then at his face. Nino said nothing, but Jun didn't seem to need words to be able to read everything that was going through Nino's head. Jun could see Nino's fear of leaving nothing behind, of having no evidence he'd ever been born. He could read the irrational connection Nino placed in color being tied to his life; a complete lack of color was, to Nino, to negate his own existence. Jun knew that however unreasonable, however insane these thoughts were, Nino could do nothing except believe in them; he had nothing else.

Covering the tattoo back up and gently pressing the bandage closed again, Jun said nothing for a moment, staring off into space pensively for a moment before speaking absently.

"What color am I?" He asked. Nino blinked.

"What?"

"What color am I?" Jun asked again. "What color makes you think of me?"

"Purple," Nino said.

"Alright," Jun agreed, before calling across the living room. "Ohno."

Ohno looked up from the paper he'd been sketching on with a charcoal stick.

"I want one like Nino's," Jun said firmly. "Purple."

"What?" Nino said, surprised. "Jun, you—"

"This should work, right?" Jun asked, lifting his shirt hem and pushing the waistband of his slacks down enough to expose the patch of skin just above his hipbone. "No one will see it unless I want them to."

"Okay," Ohno agreed amiably, and Nino grabbed Jun's elbow.

"Jun," He said urgently. "You don't have to do this."

"Stop thinking you are the only one in all this," Jun answered. "You're not. It's not just about you. You're not _alone_ , Nino. So stop acting like you are. It's annoying."

Nino let go of Jun. Jun hesitated, then leaned down and pressed a chaste kiss to Nino's forehead.

"Aiba wants something fried for dinner," Jun said. "Get it started, I'll be in shortly."

~

"You know this hurts, right?" Ohno asked warily as a shirtless and beltless Jun laid flat on the bed in front of him. Jun gave him a bland look.

"Really?" He drawled. "I thought it'd be pretty fun."

Ohno laughed, shaking his head and reaching for Jun's waistband to push it down a bit further. Jun twitched, knocking Ohno's hand away quickly.

"I'll do it," He said. "Just tell me, I'll do it myself."

Ohno nodded, and Jun let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Noticing, Ohno wiped the skin clean with some alcohol gently before speaking.

"You don’t have to," Ohno said. "If you've changed your mind, Nino won't blame you."

"No, he wouldn't," Jun agreed. "He'd continue to wallow and think of himself as some tragic hero who lives and dies alone and who only causes suffering to everyone around him. He's too stubborn to accept that we're making our own choices here and he's not forcing us to do anything. He can't talk us into it anymore than he can talk us out."

"You guys really love him a lot, huh?" Ohno said, smiling. Jun snorted, pillowing his head on his arm.

"I want to drown him in the bathtub," Jun answered, but the threat held only fondness.

Ohno laughed.


	10. Chapter 10

Ohno really wasn't surprised when the next day, Aiba pulled him into the kitchen, away from the eyes and ears of Nino and Jun, and seriously requested a tattoo of his own.

"Sometimes they forget," Aiba said softly, "that I'm the oldest and I don't need protecting."

Ohno picked a bright green for him; it was the color of the plants in his childhood picture books and something that always seemed so very _alive_ , as though it was about to bloom right off the pages. It suited Aiba somehow; Ohno suspected it had to do with the fact that Aiba always found something to hope for, even in the darkest of hours. His strength and vibrancy never wavered.

They put the tattoo on his chest, just above his heart. “That’s where they belong anyway,” Aiba had commented with a grin, his fingers brushing at the light bandage over the new wound. Despite the slight pain he was most assuredly in, Aiba saw no reason not to return to his workshop and continue his tinkering. Ohno followed when Aiba waved a hand at him, beckoning.

“I’m trying to think of something nice for Jun,” Aiba explained, gesturing at what looked to Ohno like a pile of scrap metal, wires, the carcass of an ancient television, and the head of a teddy bear. “I never seem to make anything he really likes.”

“He likes that thing in the kitchen you made,” Ohno pointed out. “The box thing. He puts fish in it.”

“Aiba-chan’s Super Awesome Blast-to-the-Past Rehydrator?” Aiba said with a completely straight face.

“Right,” Ohno said, nodding. “The box thing.”

“I made that on accident,” Aiba admitted sheepishly. “I was trying to make something that would put flowery smells into shampoo. Instead, it just puts water in stuff.”

“Why don’t you just… mix in scents?” Ohno asked with confusion.

“Because that’s no fun,” Aiba replied as though this made perfect sense. He set the head of the teddy bear in the open face of the television thoughtfully, standing back to give it a good look. Apparently dissatisfied, he pulled it out again and sighed.

“Jun is really hard to invent for,” Aiba said, shaking his head. “He doesn’t like cuddly things, he doesn’t like flashy things, and he thinks my taste in fabrics is tacky.”

“He likes useful things?” Ohno guessed.

“Yeah,” Aiba said. “But he does everything so well, he doesn’t really need any machines to help.”

“What about Nino?” Ohno asked. He knew already that all of Nino’s gadgets had some element of Aiba in them; his handheld mp3 player had a case and speakers built by Aiba, his skates were made by Aiba, his wrist detector was invented by Aiba… it seemed to Ohno that Nino was a far better candidate for a grateful recipient.

“Nino gets two different kinds of things,” Aiba said. “One, things he can use when he works. Two, things that make him happy.”

“What makes him happy?” Ohno said softly, surprised at how much he wanted to know the answer.

“Other people,” Aiba said. “Not being alone, and having something to remind him of people he cares about.” Aiba smiled wistfully, cradling the head of the bear in his hands as he spoke. “I made him a talking picture frame once. Jun and I recorded messages on it for him. But I couldn’t give it to him without a picture to go in it, and I haven’t been able to make film that actually works yet.”

Ohno spoke before he’d even had a chance to think. “Would a drawing work?”

“A drawing?”

“Yeah,” Ohno said. “Instead of a photograph, a drawing of you both.”

“Sure,” Aiba said. “But I can’t draw, and I know Jun can’t either.”

Ohno smiled. “That’s okay,” he said brightly. “I can.”

~

Nino rolled to a stop on the street corner and glanced at his wrist detector. It showed one small patrol about three-quarters of a mile away, but was otherwise clear. Peeking around the corner just in case, he only moved forward when he saw no one.

The job for Sho was going slower than he’d expected. Before, he could have managed two or three trips back and forth a night, but with the new undetectable patrols in place, he was lucky to get safely back from one. Fortunately, Sho understood and had assured Nino that the time limit on the job was not terribly strict, and that his safety outweighed the necessity of removing the books.

Suddenly, his wrist detector blipped. A small beep, a single flashing dot, and then just as quickly, it was gone. Nino’s first thought was that the detector was malfunctioning.

His second thought was that Aiba’s inventions never malfunctioned.

“Idiot!” a male voice snapped less than 100 feet away. “Keep the scrambler _on_ , remember?”

Nino knew immediately that a patrol was moving his direction very quickly. He also knew that he was running out of good luck. Taking off as fast as he could, Nino darted down a side street and over a fence; Sho’s was three blocks away, and if he was going to make it, he’d have to hurry. His movement caught the patrol’s attention; the Force took off after him, and Nino knew they were drawing close by the pinging sound of Barracuda’s ricocheting off the buildings.

He hit Sho’s property going full speed; his skates carried him up the wall, and with a smooth vault, he was over the lasers. Nino guessed that the Force would be delayed by Sho’s own body guards; he had maybe three minutes, at best. Darting into Sho’s bedroom through the balcony door, Sho looked up from where he’d been reading a newspaper (and taking notes) with surprise.

“Nino?” Sho asked, clearly unsure of why Nino had come in so abruptly.

“They heard me,” Nino said quickly. “The Force is right behind me.”

Sho’s face darkened. Standing quickly, he grabbed Nino’s elbow and pulled him towards the door, but thundering footsteps on the stairs stopped him. Swallowing, he gestured towards the wardrobe, and Nino nodded, climbing in with no hesitation. Sho pulled his hanging shirts in front of Nino to hide him, and then realizing he’d need a reason to be there, started unbuttoning his shirt as though he were changing for bed.

The door flew open, and an orange-clad Force patrol captain barreled into the room.

“What,” Sho said with remarkable levels of fury, “are you doing?”

“The rat-kid!” The captain spat, and Nino took a moment to be disgusted at the nickname’s utter lack of creativity. “He came in here!”

“I can assure you,” Sho said, drawing himself up and radiating authority, “nothing even so much as resembling a _rat_ would be caught on my property.” His tone implied heavily that the mere suggestion of an infestation was grounds for Sho to make him disappear quietly and completely.

Nino took another moment, this time to fully appreciate how delightfully _threatening_ Sho could be, given sufficient motivation.

“B-but I saw him,” the captain insisted weakly. “He came right here, sir. If we could just take a look around—”

“The only disturbance my very qualified, very experienced, and very well-paid guards have reported in the past _month_ has been the racket you and your men have caused,” Sho said as though he were disciplining a very naughty, very stupid child. “And as I have no reason what so ever to doubt them, I will continue to trust their judgment over yours.”

“Ah,” said the captain, bowing nervously. “So… we’ll just, er, be going.”

Sho said nothing; Nino could see through a gap in the shirts that he was merely standing, staring at the captain and obviously waiting for him to do exactly that; leave. Taking his cue, the captain skittered away, closing the door behind him.

Pushing the shirts aside quickly, Sho exhaled.

“Are you okay?” he asked urgently. Nino nodded, accepting the hand that Sho offered him.

“Fine,” he said with a smile. “That was pretty… close, though.”

“Nino?” Sho said with concern, and Nino held up his hands reassuringly.

“Really!” he insisted. “I’m fine! Didn’t even trip and faceplant!”

“Nino,” Sho said softly. “Your hands are shaking.”

“Eh?” Nino answered, looking at his hands. Sho was right; tiny trembles ran up and down his hands and wrists. His heart was pounding still, and his breath was quicker than was normally associated with standing totally still.

“Oh,” Nino said. “I guess that was a little scarier than I thought.”

Sho said nothing; he simply wrapped his arms around Nino’s shoulders and held him close. Nino relaxed against Sho’s chest, immediately settling his arms around Sho’s waist. Sho felt strong and solid, and strangely warm; it was both comforting and strangely familiar. Nino recognized Sho’s quiet reliability, but he couldn’t place it.

Nuzzling his nose into Sho’s neck, Nino pressed himself closer, allowing himself to let go of a few defenses in favor of trust. Sho dropped a soft kiss on Nino’s temple affectionately. Turning his head just as Sho leaned in to drop another, Nino was a touch disappointed when Sho stopped, their faces close enough to feel each other breathe.

Slowly, carefully, Nino closed the small distance. Sho’s hands moved from Nino’s shoulders to his lower back, and Nino lifted his arms to drape around Sho’s neck. The kiss stayed soft and sweet, neither one attempting to push it further. Nino wondered if there wasn’t something wrong with him; no one else seemed to fall in love so easily. And he could (or already had) love Sho, if he wanted. Sho cared about what happened to him, and was more than willing to put himself in danger for Nino’s sake. He was comfortable.

‘Like Ohno,’ he thought suddenly.

Wasn’t that what had attracted Nino to Ohno in the first place? Safety, comfort, a touch of excitement in the form of something relatively new and unexplored; everything that Nino was responding to in Sho also existed in Ohno. The only difference was that Ohno had, however unintentionally, broken Nino’s trust. Sho hadn’t.

And yet, while Nino’s feelings towards Sho were strong, his feelings for Ohno were more complex than he could immediately puzzle out. He couldn’t judge until he had a clearer understanding.

“You’re staying here, right?” Sho murmured against Nino’s cheek. Nino shivered.

“I told them I’d be back,” Nino said, but he made no attempt to pull out of Sho’s embrace.

“It’s safer here,” Sho pointed out, and Nino was struck by how utterly sure he was that Sho had no ulterior motive for convincing Nino to stay.

“I have to go home,” Nino insisted. “It’s only home for as long as I keep going back to it.”

Sho considered that statement, then seemed to come to a decision. “I’ll go back with you then.”

“What?” Nino said, surprised.

“I’ll go with you,” Sho said. “I want to make sure you get there safely.”

“Sho, I’ll be fine. And besides,” Nino said, trying to phrase it as delicately as possible, “You’re not exactly used to dodging patrols or anything—”

“No,” Sho interrupted. “But I do have something useful for you.”

Nino raised an eyebrow.

“I know you’re looking for Ohno Satoshi’s mother,” Sho said. “And I know where she is.”

~

Nino had to hand it to him; Sho did better on the street than he’d expected, and took direction well. He didn’t even bat an eyelash when Nino unceremoniously shoved him into a dumpster to hide from a patrol. He certainly didn’t _thank_ Nino for it, but once he’d spat out the coffee grinds, Sho at least seemed to forgive him.

Once they got home, Jun warily accepted Sho’s presence inside the house. Aiba was overjoyed; Sho came across Aiba’s purring pillow and cooed at it like it was actually something fluffy and adorable. As soon as he had, Aiba turned to Jun and asked with wide, hopeful eyes, “Jun, can we keep him?”

Ohno hovered around the edge of the living room, clearly unsure of whether or not his presence was wanted. Nino approached him, and Ohno looked at him like Nino was going to suddenly attack him.

“He knows where your mom is,” Nino said simply. “Go talk to him.”

“She’s alive,” Sho said once Ohno had been introduced. “She was arrested on two counts of disobedient conduct, and one count of resistance.”

“So, what,” Jun drawled. “She wore a purple hat, wrote her name in kanji, and when they told her not to, she told them to suck it?”

“In essence,” Sho said. “A young recruit in the arresting party apparently confessed to his superior office that he felt a bit conflicted, arresting an old woman who, upon seeing him, told him to eat more and wear clean socks.”

“Mom likes clean socks,” Ohno commented with a smile.

“But previous to this point, she had immunity,” Nino pointed out. “She was the collateral to Ohno’s enlistment. Something has to have changed in order for that immunity to be voided.”

“I haven’t heard any specific reports,” Sho confessed. “But I know where to look. The Force keeps an archive of all orders relating to specifically directed arrests. It’s heavily protected though.”

“Password or encryption?” Nino asked.

“Both. And it runs on software that only exists on three systems within the Ment itself. You can’t even get into the point where you’re asked for a password without the software to run it.”

“Can you get us to that page?” Jun said, glancing at Nino out of the corner of his eye.

“Probably,” Sho said.

“Aiba,” Nino said suddenly. “I’m going to need a hard drive with the fastest data transfer humanly possible.”

“Can it be shaped like a big egg?” Aiba asked, gesturing.

“As long as it remembers what I tell it to, it can be any shape you want,” Nino said generously.

“Wait,” Ohno interrupted. “I don’t understand. What are you doing?”

“If I have a drive that can record what I encounter, I can replicate the software. Or at least figure out the main components and write a new one that works the same way. Once that’s done, breaking through the encryption is less a matter of possibility and more a matter of time,” Nino explained, already running through the process for breaking through the passwords.

“Sho will have to stay here,” Jun said. “We’re going to need you, and it’s too risky to send you back now that you’ve been here; someone will notice and make the connection.”

“So I’ll be borrowing your couch?” Sho asked, laughing.

“No,” Jun replied with a smile that indicated how much he was going to enjoy Sho’s suffering. “Ohno has the couch. You can have that corner over there. Don’t worry, the carpet’s pretty soft in that spot.”

Sho’s face fell, and Nino laughed.


	11. Chapter 11

Despite Jun's threat, Sho did not end up sleeping like a dog in the corner of the living room. Instead, when Sho announced he was too tired to be planning a rebellion, Nino smiled at him and took his hand. He led Sho down the hall to his room, clearly opening his bed to Sho for the night.

As he returned to the living room to say goodnight to the others, Nino tried not to look at Ohno's face, but the quietly pained look in Ohno's eyes felt like it was burning into the back of Nino's head. Ohno dropped his gaze; Nino hated the way that hurt remained in his vision, like an afterimage painted by guilt.

After Nino returned to his bedroom, Aiba put a hand on Ohno's knee and smiled at him gently.

"If you want," he said with a grin, "you can sleep with me. We could probably even talk Jun into it! And Nino would be really jealous; he hates being left out of things."

"It's fine," Ohno said, shaking his head. "It's my fault anyhow."

"I doubt it," Aiba said with a shrug. "The older he gets, the less he thinks before he acts."

"That's not necessarily a bad thing," Ohno replied.

"It is for him," Aiba explained. "Nino regrets."

Ohno didn't answer; he couldn't figure out how he was supposed to change that fact.

~

"You don't like him much, do you?" Sho asked. Nino had herded him into the bed quite efficiently, and Sho found himself only moderately surprised when Nino curled up tight against Sho's side, his head pillowed on Sho's shoulder.

"Who?" Nino said, nuzzling his nose just under Sho's jaw. It seemed like an attempt to distract him, and Sho frowned.

"Ohno," he said. "You don't like him."

"…I don't want to talk about him," Nino said after a moment, nipping at Sho's earlobe. His small hand was brushing at Sho's hip in a rather clear attempt to shift Sho's focus. Sho caught Nino's wrist and pulled it away.

"What is it that you know about him that no one else does?" Sho insisted. "There has to be something; he seems perfectly fine to me."

"You weren't there," Nino snapped, his discomfort clear.

"No, I wasn't," Sho agreed. "So tell me what you know."

"I don't want to," Nino repeated, and Sho felt his patience stretch thin.

"Stop acting like a child," he said firmly. "You're too old for that."

Nino's gaze snapped up, his eyes sharp. His jaw set in a tight line and something flashed across his face almost before Sho could catch it. It was as though whatever mask Nino had been wearing had slipped for less than a heartbeat; the picture behind it momentarily struck Sho as almost desperate. Somehow, Sho had struck a weak spot without meaning to.

Slipping out of the bed without a word, Nino left the room. Sho found himself in a strange bed staring up at the ceiling.

Nino padded barefoot down the hall, restless and unsettled. Rationally, he recognized that Sho hadn't really intended to hit him quite so deeply, but it was hard to remember that when some tiny part of him hated knowing that Sho had never lost the way Nino had.

The Ment made things difficult for everyone save the rare few high enough in its ranks to warrant special liberties. It wasn't an opinion, it was fact. They promised security at the sake of freedom and individuality, and a large percentage of the population had never signed up for that. They'd never been given a choice. Nino's life had been shaped in the spaces between Ment influence, in the dark shadows of a strictly-regulated world. Nothing about his childhood had been in any way easy. And while he was in a sense free because of that, it was still painful to find himself held up against a standard he'd never been given a chance to meet.

Sho had called him a child, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that Nino had never been a child in the first place. He, Aiba and Jun had all been forced into making adult choices with children's' minds. Of course he didn't behave like Sho was expecting him too; Sho had a depth to him that could only occur when given the time to grow at his own pace. It wasn't to say Sho hadn't experienced strife himself; the difference was that his father had been there to help him shoulder the burden.

Nino looked at Jun and saw a man who had tried to believe in what the Ment had claimed to be. Jun had studied because he thought that one day, he'd be able to change something. He'd followed the rules because he believed that while the Ment was oppressive, they were at least fair. This faith had been ripped away from him and broken at the loss of his teacher, and a very young boy had come to the crushing realization that not only was he in grave danger just by being there, but that there was no one who could protect him. Jun had taken that grave understanding and walked away from his life because it was the only way he could think to save himself.

Aiba had tried to work within the confines of the Ment, but quickly learned that it didn't matter how skilled he was; personal limits and morals would not be tolerated. Further, whatever motivations the Ment originally had were now lost. All that remained was a fierce and unyielding force turned towards its own people. Aiba had been presented with a choice: to be on the side firing, or to be on the side being fired at. He had realized that anything he produced would be taken and warped to a purpose he didn't believe in, and that the only way to delay the inevitable was to remove himself, the tool, from their hands.

Even if it meant the loss of his own life.

When Nino met Jun and Aiba, he'd felt an immediate kinship with them. Not just because they were all alone, but because they had all been forced in some way or another to grow up in a very short period of time. The usual slow progression into adulthood had been pushed into a very rushed, haphazard growth. Jun and Aiba had found ways to fill the gaps in their maturity, but Nino was trapped in a place of a child's logic being applied to an adult world.

Nino clung to his grudge against Ohno out of a childish inability to react with his mind, rather than his heart. He knew that Sho was right; Ohno was not the villain Nino continued to treat him as. And yet the remaining sting of betrayal, however small, drove him to dismiss rationality.

He couldn't decide what was worse; that he knew all this, or that he couldn't figure out how to change.

Nino's feet carried him to the living room without him noticing until he was standing next to the couch Ohno was sleeping on. In the darkness, Nino could barely make out the line of Ohno's jaw, or the rise and fall of his chest. He stood there, looking down on the object of his continued angst, and felt a complicated swirl of emotions rushing through him.

"Nino?" Ohno said softly, and Nino jumped. He hadn't realized Ohno was actually awake.

"Sorry," he said immediately. He took a step backwards, but Ohno was already sitting up and making space on the couch for Nino to sit. Wordlessly, Nino joined him, pulling his knees up to his chest.

"For a little while there," Ohno said, "I thought you might have forgiven me."

"It's not that easy," Nino said, but he couldn't decide what he meant by it. Ohno seemed to sense Nino's confusion, and he spoke gently, as though his voice alone could fill the space between them.

"I don't blame you. Whether I meant to or not, I hurt you. I'm very sorry for that. But I still don't really understand what it is about me that you don't like," he said. "I can't figure out if you're scared of me, or if you hate me, or if you just wish you'd never met me in the first place."

"Do I seem like a kid to you?" Nino asked, not accusing so much as inquiring.

"In some ways," Ohno said. "Not in others."

"I don't hate you, and I'm not scared of you," Nino said.

"I'm glad," Ohno replied.

"I hate being wrong," Nino continued. "Being wrong can get you killed. It's killed a lot of people I knew. Being wrong about trusting you… is something I can't stand."

Quietly, he added, "But if I forgive you, then I was wrong to stop trusting you. Either way, I've screwed up."

"Being wrong isn't what's dangerous," Ohno said. "Being wrong and not learning from it is."

Nino blinked at him, surprised. "That's one of the smarter things I've heard you say."

"Well, my mom said it, not me," Ohno said sheepishly.

Nino laughed, feeling something in him twist. He wasn't sure he could put the feeling into words; it was part relief, part resignation, part regret. Now that some part of him had given him permission to forgive Ohno, he couldn't help but feel uncomfortable at how much time he'd wasted.

Time with the people around him, more than anything else, was precious to Nino.

"I bet Sho is hogging my pillows," Nino said with a sigh, leaning sideways until his head came to rest on Ohno's shoulder.

"…Nino?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you—what happened that night. Would you take it back?" Ohno asked quietly.

Nino turned the question over in his mind. That night, and the feelings he'd acted on, had seemed at the time almost unbearably powerful. Even the tiniest gesture was magnified in such a way that Nino had felt like every word between them and every touch confirmed a sensation of connection. Something about Ohno was reflected in Nino, and he'd been drawn to that.

"No," he said finally. "I wouldn't."

Ohno turned and hugged him, suddenly and almost desperate. Nino was struck by the thought that somehow, that had been the thing Ohno most wanted to hear.

He was glad.

~

Aiba had called them all into the kitchen the next morning, radiating a wiggling sort of excitement like a proud puppy who'd caught a rat. He positioned them all around the counter how he wanted them, each facing something covered with a dishcloth.

"That better be a clean one," Jun warned Aiba with a glance at the fabric. Aiba laughed nervously, but didn't answer, confirming Jun's fears that something unclean was _touching his counters._

"After a morning of slaving away," Aiba said dramatically, and Nino snorted, "I have completed it."

"Completed… what?" Sho asked warily, voicing the question on all their minds.

"That harddrive!" Aiba said as thought this were obvious.

"…Already?" Nino asked, sounding impressed.

"I am just that good," Aiba said, puffing up.

"I'm sure you are," Jun said flatly.

"Anyway, time for the big reveal! Are you ready?" Aiba said, bravely ignoring Jun's lack of faith. "Three, two, one!"

He pulled off the dishcloth to reveal… well. Nino assumed it was a harddrive. Maybe.

"…Aiba," Jun said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"This is the on button here," Aiba said, pinching a nub at the top of one mound. "And this is the data transfer button!"

"Aiba," Nino said, sounding pained.

"As you can see, they're pretty large, but this round shape means they won't overheat as quickly, and plus it's just nice to look at, right?" Aiba said, cupping each round half.

" _Aiba,_ " Jun interrupted. "I thought you said you were making it into an egg shape?"

"Aren't these nicer?" Aiba chirped brightly.

"They look like boobs," Ohno pointed out unnecessarily.

"They _are_ boobs," Nino growled. "You made my harddrive into a D-cup!"

"Please," Aiba sniffed. "They are double D's, at the very least."

"I know we had this talk already," Jun said, crossing his arms. "After the penis flashlight, and then again after the bikini-shaped tea cozy."

"But this is different!" Aiba insisted, fingering the nipple-buttons again. "These have form _and_ function!"

"You expect me to hack into the Ment," Nino drawled, "with a pair of _huge boobs?!_ "

"Great, isn't it?" Aiba beamed. "They'll never see it coming!"

"… _penis flashlight!?_ " Sho squeaked after a beat of stunned silence.

"Look at it this way, Nino," Aiba said. "You may be short, but at least you've got a big rack!"

"I hate you," Nino said wearily.


	12. Chapter 12

Nino flat-out refused to be the one to directly operate Aiba's breasts. He almost demanded they be completely rebuilt, but Jun pointed out that they were already running on a limited amount of time, and another full day was more than they could afford.

"Fine," Nino agreed, crossing his arms and looking distinctly unhappy with the arrangement, "but you are pushing the buttons, not me."

"I find your fear of breasts both charming and quaint," Jun commented sweetly.

"Brave words coming from a man who won't even say 'vagina'," Nino replied, his tone just as syrupy. Sho made another strange choking noise and covered his face with both hands.

"I'll say 'vagina'," Aiba added helpfully. "Vagina! Vagina! Va—"

"Will vaginas help us break into the Ment?" Ohno interrupted, his brow knit in confusion.

"No," Jun said, knocking Aiba across the back of the head. "But we really all need to sit down and get started on this."

"And by we, you mean me," Nino pointed out. "Aiba, pick those things up; I want to make sure my processor is up to speed."

Aiba obediently scooped up the breast-drives, following behind Nino into his bedroom. Nino threw open the doors of the closet; he had never used it for its intended purpose (to Jun's continued dismay,) but rather as a hidden alcove for the equipment that normally wouldn't fit in his room along with his sizeable bed-shaped sleeping nest. Trailing behind, the other three joined them in the room, each taking up a spot on the bed as Nino began pulling screens forward. Sho let out a low whistle; there were at least seven displays of varying sizes that he could see, each on a carefully-mounted jointed arm that pulled out to wherever Nino wanted it to be.

"Where do you want them?" Aiba asked, holding the breasts aloft. Nino visibly recoiled, but pointed at a large, L-shaped server tower humming in the center of the mass of screens.

"I need to run a diagnostic to see what they can _actually_ do," Nino said, a keyboard sliding under his fingers as he immediately started typing. Aiba didn't seem in any way hurt by the implication that his drives might not be up to snuff; instead, he settled on the bed cross-legged and watched Nino work with open admiration on his face. As Nino's fingertips flew across the keys, screens moved forward and back, pulling into the center as Nino summoned them and then sliding out of the way as he called another forward. Characters scrolled across the screen faster than Sho's eyes could follow them; he almost wouldn't believe that Nino could, were it not for the fact that occasionally, he reached out to drag his finger across the screens. The path of his finger highlighted the text beneath it; he tapped once and moved it somewhere else in the stream of script, tapping it a second time to drop it in place.

"That's new," Aiba commented brightly. "What did you do, change the touch sensitivity?"

"Altered the definitions," Nino corrected absently. "I actually had to lower the sensitivity; they were detecting touch when I sneezed."

"You made the screens?" Ohno asked Aiba, politely curious. Aiba leaned back on his hands, grinning.

"Yeah, although I still think nine were a bit excessive," he said. Jun snorted, leaning forward and squinting at the screens, trying to track the movement.

"You say that as though you didn't spend more than a week in absolute tinkering bliss over them," he pointed out.

"I enjoy my work," Aiba said, shrugging. Sho laughed as Jun rolled his eyes, and Ohno began poking at Nino's pillows experimentally.

"Guys," Nino interrupted, "I love you, but shut up. Trying to focus, here."

"Shutting!" Aiba chirped, flopping backwards on the bed. His arm caught Ohno across the face, knocking him down with him.

"Oh for—" Jun said as Ohno let out a surprised sound of pain, "Must you maul everyone who walks through our door?"

"Sorry!" Aiba said. "I'm sorry, Ohno!"

Nino growled, and Aiba abruptly went silent. He mouthed apologies at Ohno until Ohno waved both his hands in a placating 'it's fine' gesture; Sho and Jun both locked their attention on Nino. His face was marked by a frown of concentration and he'd started murmuring as he worked. Jun recognized the sign of a job that Nino actually found somewhat challenging, but Sho was fascinated by the overall vision Nino presented. Surrounded by screens that were moving fluidly through space, text moving at a speed that didn't seem understandable, his fingers never pausing in their race across the keys, Nino seemed both robotic and mechanic at the same time as giving off an impression of deeply complex human ability.

Sho had seen a lot of talent since meeting these men; Aiba had an inborn skill with mechanics that was immediately clear to anyone who saw his creations. He knew how to make things work, and often he managed it in completely new and novel ways. Jun was gifted with an ability to read people; he knew what to say and when to say it, and his judgment of character was, as far as Sho could tell, never wrong. Ohno had a steely determination that meant that nothing was impossible in his mind; he also had considerable artistic talent, from the doodles he'd seen Ohno sketch out on spare bits of paper and abandon around the house. And Nino seemed to have a straight-up digital _mind_ ; to him, code, all code, was a language in which he was entirely fluent.

"Aiba," Nino said, breaking the silence. "What is this thing rated for?"

"What, in terms of transfer?" Aiba answered. Sho wasn't sure what he meant; he was slightly comforted when a quick glance at Jun and Ohno's faces confirmed that they didn't know either.

"No, processing," Nino said. "The transfer's fast enough to mimic, but the Ment isn't exactly running your average 25 gigaflop server."

"The fastest I ran it against was a 20 gigaflop," Aiba said, sounding sheepish. "Sorry, not sure above that."

"Well," Nino said, three screens pulling forward together, "I can run more than that without much worry; might want to get a fire extinguisher ready, though."

"Why?" asked Sho as the drives kicked in, whirring and beginning to quake.

"Because," Aiba explained as Jun jogged to the hallway for the requested fire extinguisher. "At the kind of speeds we're talking, there are two constraints. One result is that the processing time is too slow; it can't interpret the data fast enough to run it."

"And the other?" Sho said, concerned edging into his tone.

"Physics," Nino said with a smirk. "It'll overheat and explode."

"Always a possibility," Aiba agreed.

Sho wondered if anyone else found their level of nonchalance unsettling.

~

Ohno was pretty sure it had been hours since Nino brought them all into his room and started working with the computer; at the very least, it had been long enough for him to fall asleep a few times on Nino's bed, his nose buried in Nino's pillows, surrounded by what he remembered as Nino's smell. Everyone else seemed fairly anxious (except for Aiba, who was 100% excited) about what Nino was doing, but Ohno didn't really get it, and he wasn't really going to try. Nino was a hacker, and a good one; it seemed kind of a waste of energy to think about it further than that.

He hadn't been allowed to spend much time in here; a few days earlier, and Nino had treated him as though he was invading on some extremely private space. He'd dragged his fingers along the material of Nino’s bedcovers; some of them were rough, others smooth, still others silky to the touch. They weren’t piled in any particular order that he could discern; the chaotic nature of Nino’s bed was, to Ohno, an accurate reflection of Nino himself.

His fingers picked out spatters of colors in the fabrics; Nino seemed to have picked them purely for these qualities, considering none of the shades ever remotely complimented each other. The only thing they all had in common was their overwhelmingly worn state.

“I didn’t tell you that you could come in here,” Nino’s voice had growled from the doorway. Ohno had looked up, his eyes wide as he was caught in the act.

“Sorry.”

But here, now, Nino seemed to have no problems with Ohno splaying out across his bed and dozing on his soft pillows. He wasn't sure if it was because Nino genuinely didn't mind, or if he just hadn't thought about it long enough to refuse. Either way, he was going to take full advantage of the situation and memorize everything he could about the room.

Aside from his colorful bedding, Nino's space was cluttered with objects; most of them were gadgets he'd obviously scavenged from scrap heaps, judging by their age and overall condition. He'd hung CDs (a long since outdated form of media storage) from string on the ceiling in one corner, and as they rotated slowly in the air currents of the room, they reflected the light of the computer monitors, sparkling. Across a dresser along one wall, mixed in with the mechanics, were things that seemed to have no real purpose: a stuffed elephant, a coffee mug, a single pearl earring. Ohno wanted to ask what they meant, because they clearly meant _something_ to Nino, being displayed like they were.

It was then that he noticed Aiba, Jun and Sho had all left the room; he vaguely remembered them asking each other in hushed tones if it was worth waking him up. Sitting up and rubbing at his face, Ohno found himself facing Nino's back.

Still surrounded by monitors, Nino had pulled up a chair, curling his knees against his chest. The screens circled him almost completely, bathing him in a soft electric glow that made him look small and otherworldly. Before he realized it, Ohno was standing and reaching out to Nino, instinctively trying to pull him out of the digital world that seemed, at least to his eyes, to be swallowing the boy whole.

Nino jumped at the touch of Ohno's hand on his shoulder; he cursed as one screen flashed at him, announcing a keystroke misstep in bright bold characters Ohno couldn't read.

"Sorry," he said, realizing that Nino had made the error when Ohno startled him. Nino made a non-committal noise, his focus still firmly on the code dancing in front of him. Ohno realized his hand was still on Nino's shoulder; he could feel Nino shivering slightly through the thin material of his t-shirt.

"You're cold," he said into the silence, as though perhaps Nino hadn't noticed it.

"This encryption is tricky," Nino said. Ohno realized it was an explanation, and he wordlessly pulled a blanket off Nino's bed and draped it across the boy's shoulders.

"But it's working?" he asked, unable to judge from Nino's face.

"I'm copying it, if that's what you mean," Nino said grimly. "I really would rather not have this anywhere near my system, but there isn't much I can do about that."

"Sorry," Ohno said again, suddenly made aware of the fact that this was all for him; Nino didn't have to be doing this. None of these guys had to be helping him save his mother. His hands came to rest on Nino's shoulders again, this time kneading softly into the tension he felt there. To his surprise, Nino seemed to relax under his touch.

"It's really… unpleasant," Nino said, a sick sort of expression crossing his face. "I've seen some nasty code, but this is kind of…"

"What do you mean?" Ohno asked. "It's written wrong?"

"No," Nino explained, shaking his head. "I mean it's mean. Cruel. Code... it's a reflection of the coder. Everyone has a different style, a different way to write the same processes. A lot of coders build traps into the encryption, so anyone who goes poking around in it ends up with a big mess of useless scrap metal. But those kinds of codes… they're sloppy, usually. Careless. Whoever wrote them didn't care what kind of havoc their code wreaked on someone else's system, so they wrote haphazard code."

"This looks messy to me," Ohno said, eyeing the screens and the endless trail of characters across the screen. But Nino shook his head again, and as he spoke, an edge of weariness worked into his voice.

"That's just it; it isn't. It's incredibly complex, and very, very dangerous, but this is structured. This is elegant. There are no mistakes or holes or redundant strings; this is the kind of code someone spends their entire life writing, and then some. It's crawling with worms; if I wasn't sitting right here watching it, my system would have crashed over a dozen times already. This stuff is _deadly_ ," Nino said. "It's sterile and efficient and absolutely lacking a human element."

Ohno considered this; if he understood what Nino was saying, than the implication reflected in the code was clear.

"It's the Ment," he said softly. "It does its job, and it does it well."

"And who knows how many it killed along the way," Nino answered, just as soft.


	13. Chapter 13

After twenty-six straight hours of coding, Jun and Sho had gathered in the kitchen and started discussing the best method for removing Nino from his chair and forcing him to eat and sleep. Sho was advocating a rational, reasonable presentation of the merits of both eating and sleeping until Nino was forced to conclude that both were the correct course of action.

Jun said they should just throw a pillowcase over his head and make Aiba drag him.

"That sounds unnecessarily barbaric," Sho commented, wringing his hands.

"If you don't use the pillowcase, he starts screaming like a dying animal," Jun explained with the practiced ease of someone who had sat on Nino for almost three hours until he agreed to a sandwich.

"Wait," Aiba said, entering the kitchen halfway through Jun's explanation. "Are we talking about feeding him, or that time with the handcuffs?"

Sho stared at Aiba with something akin to horror.

"He hasn't slept in almost two days," Jun said, ignoring Aiba's question, "and I'm pretty sure the last thing he ate was a milk bun at 2am."

"I'm pretty sure Ohno managed to get a few bites of rice in him this morning," Aiba said, "but I like pillowcasing. So I think we should pillowcase him, nice and hard."

"How," Sho asked, his voice almost reverent with awe, "do you make everything sound like innuendo?"

"Talent," Aiba said at the same time as Jun said, "Perversion." Aiba pretended to look hurt.

Sho grabbed the tray Jun had made up off the counter; he managed not to spill the meager rations of miso, rice, and what appeared to be croquettes. It barely seemed like enough for a meal to Sho, but he'd noticed that Nino's meals consisted of considerably less than most people; he evened out Aiba, who ate enough to feed three people.

"I'm just going to ask him," Sho said, "before you people start traumatizing him."

"You say that like he's not made of grabby hands and sarcasm," Jun drawled, following behind Sho. If he intended to go on a peace mission with Nino, Jun was not going to try and stop him. He was, however, going to protect his nice rice bowl. Aiba trailed behind after scouting the counter for leftovers.

Nino was still curled up in the center of the screens, but his eyes had dark circles under them, and his lip had split in one corner where he'd been chewing at it while he worked. His hands had stiffened into a claw-like shape and he hadn't been able to turn his head to either side for about four hours now. He looked exhausted; his skin was paper white and he was shaking ever so slightly. Ohno had monitored his temperature without prompting; he draped blankets across Nino during the night, and fanned him during the day. They barely spoke to each other except for when Ohno asked if he needed anything and Nino grunted vaguely in response.

Ohno had napped four times; he hadn't seen Nino's eyes so much as blink.

Sho entered with the tray, his entourage close behind. He cleared his throat importantly, but Nino appeared not to notice him at all; Ohno felt obligated to sit up straighter and look like he was paying attention, so Sho's effort didn't go to waste.

"Nino," Sho said. He waited for a response; when he didn't get one, he tried again, louder: "Nino."

Nino's shoulders hunched like a child caught in the middle of a crime.

"Nino," Sho continued, his voice taking on the quality of a lecturing nanny, "you haven't eaten in a very long time, and you haven't properly slept in even longer. Jun and I feel that it would be best if you took a break for a little while and rested."

"Sleep is for the weak," Nino muttered darkly. "Food, too."

"I know you're very busy," Sho said patiently, "but it's for your own good. Now you can either step away and come sit in the kitchen with us, or Jun and Aiba are going to have to take more drastic steps."

"I hid all the pillowcases before I started," Nino said smugly.

"The pillowcase is a convenience, not a requirement," Jun replied serenely.

"I can't," Nino said. Something in his tone made Ohno reach out, but Sho was already answering.

"You have to," he said, still in that gently patronizing tone.

"I _can't_ ," Nino repeated, and this time his voice cracked on the word. Ohno never made it to his side; Aiba was there first, with one hand on Nino's shoulder and the other stroking through his hair. Nino sucked in a deep breath, and Ohno could tell by the reflection of his face in the screen that he was forcing his spine to straighten through sheer will, leaning into Aiba as though he could absorb some of his stable strength.

"I can watch the system for you," Jun said quietly. Ohno and Sho looked at him, surprised; Jun looked away, and Ohno wasn't sure if it was embarrassment or guilt that made him explain, "I'm not completely useless, you know."

"No one said you were," Ohno said, because they hadn't. Jun had, apparently, just assumed.

"No offense," Nino said (and everyone in the room knew that just by saying it, he meant it), "but this is beyond your level."

"I'm not going to be rewriting anything," Jun insisted. "I'll babysit the system while you just _eat something_ and sleep."

"But—"

"Three hours," Jun said. "Just sleep for three hours, okay? I'll wake you up if anything catastrophic happens."

Nino found himself out of excuses, and allowed himself to be pulled from the chair by Aiba and led into the kitchen. He was awkward on his feet, stumbling and tripping over himself, so Ohno wrapped an arm around his waist and steadied him as they walked. He was about Nino's height, so it was easier than Aiba doing it anyway.

Plus, he wanted to feel Nino in his arms and make sure that thin, pale creature was still Nino, somewhere inside.

"You better not take advantage of my weakened state and molest me," Nino warned him, leaning more heavily onto Ohno's hold. "Aiba made me a rape whistle."

"I'll try to restrain myself," Ohno promised solemnly. "We rapists _do_ hate whistles."

Nino laughed.

~

"I didn't know Jun knew any coding," Ohno commented as Nino ate, attempting to fill the silence left by Aiba digging through the fridge and Sho watching Nino lift the chopsticks to his mouth. Ohno was half-convinced Sho was willing the food into Nino with his mind.

"Jun-chan's multi-talented," Aiba explained over his shoulder.

"You mean he's _sneaky_ ," Nino grumbled.

"You're just jealous because he thought to bug The Place ashtrays before you did."

"I am not jealous," Nino insisted, taking an angry bite. "And he didn't think of it first, he just _got_ to it first."

"Of course he did," Aiba placated with absolutely no sincerity whatsoever.

"How's it going, by the way?" Sho interrupted. "The hacking, I mean."

Ohno and Nino pulled nearly identical faces of frustration.

"The damn thing is so layered," Nino muttered darkly, stabbing at the rice. "I have no idea how much deeper it goes. Just when I think I'm finally at the basement, they throw another level under me."

"So... not so great, then," Sho translated.

Nino put down his chopsticks to rub his face with both hands; he was completely exhausted after hours and hours of sifting through code. He felt like his thoughts were playing in a series of truth algorithms and data packets. His fingers kept twitching as though a keyboard was still underneath him, and the food felt ashy in his mouth, like he was too tired to even taste properly.

"'Great' is a relative term," Nino said finally.

"You should sleep," Aiba said quietly, leaning over the counter towards Nino. "Use my room; Jun will throw a fit if you go near those screens without having rested."

Nino's fingers tightened on the edge of the countertop.

"Jun might need my help," Nino said, uneasy.

"Jun does not need your help," Aiba said; he obviously regretted the statement instantly, because Nino seemed to collapse in on himself, the words ringing in the air almost as loudly as if Aiba had reached out and slapped him. The worst thing he could have said was that Nino wasn't needed; it stripped Nino of any strength he may have been holding on to.

"What Aiba means," Sho said as Aiba mentally kicked himself, "is that for now, we've got things under control, and that you should rest because we'll need you later."

Nino mumbled something inaudible into his chest; Sho make a questioning noise, and Nino repeated louder, "Do I have to go by myself?"

"Sho and Ohno will go with you," Aiba said quickly, attempting to make up for his earlier misstep. Sho opened his mouth, but Ohno cut him off.

"If Nino wants us to," he amended. Sho nodded, satisfied. In response, Nino just grabbed both their hands and slid off the barstool he'd been sitting on, pulling them both down the hall to Aiba's room. Sho made a series of protesting noises that were obviously fake, because he was smiling and making no effort to stop Nino from dragging him into the room; Ohno was still reeling over the fact that Nino _wanted him there._

"Aiba's bed isn't as mindblowingly amazing as mine," Nino said, throwing himself down in the center of it and sitting with his legs crossed, "but it's okay."

"It's springy," Ohno commented, sitting down next to Nino. Sho sat on his other side, bouncing himself experimentally. Nino grinned like a Cheshire cat.

"Guess why," he said. Sho took one look at his expression and looked at the bed with wide, terrified eyes.

"I can't escape," he said, sounding hunted. "The gutter just _follows_ me everywhere I go!"

"If he can't debauch your body," Nino said, sing-song, "he will at least debauch your mind."

Sho groaned and flopped back on the bed, loose limbs sprawling across the coverlet as he relaxed into its softness against his will. He rolled over onto his stomach, sighing heavily. Nino watched his body spread out, and Ohno watched him watch; Nino's eyes roamed down Sho, his fingers reaching out to the closet part of Sho he could touch: his lower back.

"Here," he said to himself softly, absently, as though he didn't know he said it outloud. His fingers traced a pattern on Sho's skin where his shirt had ridden up, and then down along the edge of the waist of his pants. It was just above the dip in his spine that curved into his ass.

"That's a good spot," Ohno said. He knew what Nino meant immediately, but he was pretty sure Sho would not. He felt no real need to clarify the issue, especially when Sho made such charming expressions of trauma.

"What?" Sho said urgently, attempting to roll over and discovering as Nino's palm spread across his back that the small man was stronger than he looked. "What are you talking about?"

"Your ass," Nino said sweetly. "And how we're going to mark it."

"My _ass!?_ " Sho shrieked, attempting to flail Nino off him.

"It's very nice," Ohno said soothingly, reaching around Nino to pat the swell of Sho's ass approvingly. "I can't wait to get my hands on it."

"You'll be gentle, of course," Nino confirmed, squeezing his hand. Sho squeaked.

"Oh, very gentle," Ohno agreed. "It will hardly hurt at all."

"BAD TOUCH," Sho yelled. "I NEED AN ADULT!"

Nino pushed his face into the bedspread as Ohno kneaded Sho lovingly.

"Now, now," Nino said, straddling Sho's torso and allowing his face to come up for air. "Don't be such a baby. It'll be over before you know it."

Sho looked like he was about to cry. Ohno took pity on him.

"A red one would be good on you, I think," he said, already getting off the bed and sifting through the gadget piles in Aiba's room to find the tattoo machine. "Right at the lowest part of your back."

"Wait," Sho said. "Wait, you mean you're not about to gang bang me?"

"You have a very dirty mind, Sho," Nino said innocently. "Nobody said anything about a gang bang; we were just planning your tattoo."

"I hate you," Sho said weakly. "...But I'm glad you're not going to ravish me."

"We're giving you a nice one," Ohno said, getting set up.

"But we never said we weren't going to ravish you," Nino pointed out reasonably.

Fortunately for Sho, as Ohno drew the symbol across his back in ink and filled it in, Nino curled against Sho's other side and drifted off to sleep. It made the discomfort of the tattoo a bit easier when Sho could brush the hair off Nino's forehead with one hand, and see the brightness of Nino's own tattoo on his arm. Ohno was lost in the world of art, seeing the image bloom on Sho's skin as he worked, feeling as though he wasn't just painting a character, but a connection. Even if Sho left them, even if he returned to his mansion and his seat in the nearly untouchable sky, this mark would prove he'd once hidden in the belly of the rebellion and rubbed elbows with revolutionaries.

"You really do have a nice ass," Ohno commented absently. Sho groaned.


	14. Chapter 14

Nino did not get to sleep long. Aiba came in and woke him up after just two hours; Sho had looked like he was getting ready to argue that Nino needed more rest than that, but Aiba was unusually serious.

"He's at his limit," Aiba said directly to Nino. "We did what we could, but about twenty minutes ago your scanner code triggered a worm that he's only barely keeping back."

Nino swore; Aiba helped him off the bed and watched Nino take off down the hall. His expression was hard to read; Sho couldn't decide if Aiba was worried, regretful, or both. If it was Sho in his place, then he probably would have the same look.

"Is it bad?" Ohno asked softly.

"Too soon to tell," Aiba responded, just as soft. "Jun's going to be kicking himself pretty hard for it, regardless."

"Everyone here takes things awfully personally," Sho said, frowning. Aiba looked at him sharply, his voice clipped and laced with deep-buried pain.

"Everyone here takes _responsibility_ ," he corrected. "Do you want to die?"

"What?" Sho said, startled. "No, of course not."

"Then accept fault for your own mistakes," Aiba said. "It's the only way to protect ourselves."

Sho had not managed a reply when Aiba turned and stalked out. Ohno rolled Aiba's words over in his mind and felt with some worry that Aiba was right; he couldn't decide if he wanted to know what mistakes Aiba had made to learn this particular lesson.

"...I'm never going to completely understand them, am I?" Sho asked.

"I don't think anyone could," Ohno assured him. "But we don't have to; we just have to know how to take care of them."

"Now that is something I can do," Sho said firmly.

"Good," Ohno said with a laugh. "Because I have no idea."

~

When Aiba joined Jun and Nino in Nino's room, Nino had already taken back his position of command. Jun was explaining everything that had transpired in the few hours Nino had been away in a strained tone; Nino nodded, his eyes glued on the screens. His fingers hadn't hit the keyboard yet.

"Your firewalls are holding," Jun was saying, "but it's picking at that re-route string and I can't get near enough to reinforce it without giving the worm an opening."

"Ugh, missile-worms," Nino said with disgust. "They just drill and drill in one place until they get through. Redirecting them is a bitch."

"A bitch you can pull off?" Jun asked.

"Please," Nino said with a grin. "It'll take more than one little worm to get through my encryption."

Aiba was glad to see Nino smiling again; it felt like it had been a while since he'd seen Nino with any expression other than exhaustion. Aiba wasn't exactly well-rested either; he and Jun had been taking turns in The Place, trying to glean as much information about the new patrols as they could. Nino hadn't brought it up yet, but the three of them all knew that it was going to take more than hacking to break Ohno's mother free. This entire mess was pure reconnaissance to determine her exact location. Once they had that, they still had to figure out how they were physically going to extract her.

Breaking into the Ment's computer system was one thing. Marching into the Ment prisons themselves and walking out alive was another thing entirely.

"Not to be the bearer of bad news," Aiba said with a tired smile, "but I have some bad news."

Jun looked up; Nino's eyes stayed glued to the screen, but Aiba was pretty sure he was still listening.

"I caught up with Toma earlier," Aiba said. "The Force is raiding the City Limits."

The color drained from Jun's face.

"Fuck," he said, "how far are they?"

"They're going by sectors," Aiba explained. "So far they've hit West 5, North 12, West 9, and this morning they broke into South 2. It's not clear how many people they've got so far."

"Arrests, or casualties?" Jun said.

"Both," Aiba said darkly. "But the numbers are kind of sketchy; they're picking up their bodies as they go, so all we've got is the people missing. Whether they're in prison or the crematory isn't clear."

"Anyone we know?" Nino asked, sounding small. Aiba felt a surge of protectiveness was through him; Nino's sister had vanished like this, and his mother had died in a similar fashion.

"Four confirmed dead, according to witnesses. Mamoru, Yuri, Takako and Mrs. Mitsubishi," Aiba said. All four had been semi-regulars at The Place. "Toma says they're keeping lists of the missing; all are assumed alive until witnesses can prove otherwise."

"What the hell are they doing?!" Jun snapped, fury twisting his face. "We don't even know what the point of this is. The stepped up patrols, the Barracudas, the raids; what the fuck has got them all antsy?"

"I think I can answer that," Sho said from the doorway. Ohno was hovering behind him looking grim.

"Oh?" Jun snapped. Aiba winced; he knew Sho wasn't the target of Jun's anger, but that didn't make it any easier to bear.

"How much do you know about ZERO?" Sho asked. Aiba blinked; the number?

"...A bit," Jun said warily.

"None," Aiba said. "Nino?"

"Nino is not available to answer at the moment," a tinny recording played from one speaker to Nino's side. Nino himself did not appear to have heard. "Please stop trying to talk to him, Aiba."

"Why did I leave that feature in?" Aiba grumped. "He only ever tells it to talk to _me._ "

"What about ZERO?" Jun pressed. Sho entered the room fully; Ohno followed with an armful of newspapers.

"ZERO is an upper-level resistance," Sho explained. "I wouldn't call it a rebellion, because there certainly isn't an aggressive effort being made towards overthrowing the Ment. But ZERO's goals involve the preservation of knowledge and communication between the upper-levels of the old families."

"Meaning?" Aiba said.

"Meaning, we can talk to each other without the Ment noticing," Sho said. "Ohno's mother was mentioned; we keep track of civilian arrests so we can prepare each other for potential raids. I knew they were looking at my collection when I was tipped off by a friend."

"So... you're part of ZERO?" Jun said. "And you've been writing to your little penpals since you've been here, endangering us and everyone in the City Limits?"

"Er," Sho said.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't gut you here and now," Jun said.

"ZERO have been working on the question of what the motivations behind these raids are," Sho said. "I think I cracked it."

"...Go on," Jun said. Sho reached for one of the newspapers Ohno was holding. He held it up, pointing at a block of text. Parts had been circled, crossed out, and underlined. To Aiba, it looked like complete chaos; judging by Jun's face, he couldn't make heads or tails of it either.

"ZERO uses a rolling cipher," Sho said. "Each family has their own, and only other ZERO families can recognize and read it. I'm the last one using the Sakurai cipher, and I've been communicating with the last Kobayashi cipher user. We talk through the newspapers; we use the automatic censor system to force the text the way we want it. Kobayashi consults on military strategy; her father was a Commander and she's ranked as a Colonel. She's not sure of the source, but the push to finalize the barracudas and start the extra patrols was definitely from a person in a top position. We've been crunching numbers and building a timeline since the whole mess started."

"And you've figured it out?" Jun said.

"Unfortunately," Sho said. "One month ago, three ZERO members stopped all communications. This happens occasionally when someone is being watched more closely than usual, but at most, it lasts two weeks. We check in with each other constantly. But these three haven't checked in. Kobayashi is fairly sure two are dead, and the third is hospitalized, in a coma. We don't think ZERO has been compromised, but the old families are being taken out gradually."

"How does this relate to attacks on the City Limits?" Aiba asked.

"You have to understand the structure of the Ment," Sho continued. "The Ment only works because of the triad: Ment officials, old families as consults and pillars of the old country, and the citizens as tools and pieces of the Ment machine. The Ment previously required all three to function. The old families are prisoners, but treated well because our knowledge could potentially lead the civilian body to uprising. They can't afford to lose our support. And the civilians outnumber every Ment and Force official four to one. If there is a full on citizen rebellion, it would be a matter of hours before the Ment crumbled. Those are the weak spots. Until now, the Ment has been relatively accepting of this and done their best to keep this structure intact."

"But if they're going after the old families and the citizens, that would imply they intend on destroying that," Jun said.

"Exactly," Sho said. "Ignorance is their strongest tool right now; they can strike because there's no organized movement to raise awareness of the situation. People aren't fighting the Force because they don't realize they can defeat it. As long as the Ment makes its move before people connect the dots, they can crush both the old families and the citizens without any trouble for them."

"They're taking them out in the order of who would understand," Aiba said, somewhat awestruck. "The old families know about the triad structure, and the City Limits house the people who are most likely to resist."

"It gets worse," Sho said darkly. "The prisons only hold so many people. At the rate they're raiding, I promise you they will prefer to kill than capture. And of the people already arrested, they don't have much time before the Ment decides to clear space and kills them too."

"My mother," Ohno said softly. "And ZERO knows how long we have."

"How long?" Jun asked.

"48 hours," Sho said. "They're averaging about 300 prisoners per City Limit district, and the number keeps rising. Any longer and they'll have overflow."

"That's... not much time," Aiba said. Ohno looked as though his heart was being torn apart from the inside, and Sho held the newspaper as if it were a shield against the pure evil that oozed from every inch of the Ment. Jun was looking at his watch, calculating exactly how long they had.

They'd never make it. There just wasn't enough time.

Suddenly, a trilling piece of music played from Nino's computer. Aiba recognized the sound; it was the music that played whenever a battle was won in a video game from the late 1990s. Nino had set it as an alarm for various things on his system, but it always meant something good had happened.

Nino stretched, his fingers leaving the keys as he rolled his shoulders.

"You zapped the worm?" Jun said, looking encouraged.

"Dear, dear Matsumoto-chan," Nino said. "I have done far more than beat an insignificant missile-worm into submission."

Everyone stared at him; Ohno finally broke the silence.

"What did you do?" he prompted.

"I," Nino said, puffing with pride, "have broken the encryption."

"All of it?" Jun said, astonished.

"All of it," Nino confirmed. "And I've done you one better."

"Please," Jun drawled blandly, sounding as bored as possible. "Tell us more."

"I have bugged the Force registry," Nino said brightly. "I don't know how quickly your little ZERO buddies can tell each other things, but for now, I can tell you the second any prisoner transfers in or out of the Force system."

"How is that helpful, exactly?" Sho asked, a bit stung by Nino's implication that Sho's secret society was inferior.

"Because I've built a handy-dandy little program that can tell me where everyone is all the time. And it just found Ohno's mother, in Block 21C, Unit 4," Nino said, grinning like a kid on Christmas. "She just had lunch; they stopped giving her utensils because she kept breaking them until she could use them like chopsticks."

"Oh, Mom," Ohno said, sounding relieved.

"I guess that settles it," Aiba said.

"Settles what?" Sho asked.

"Tomorrow night," Aiba said as though it was a very easy, simple thing to do, "we'll break into the Ment and break her out."

"Oh my god," Sho said. "I need booze."

"You and me both," Jun said.

"Considering this may be the last day we're all alive," Nino commented lightly, "I would recommend it."

"You heard the lightweight," Jun said. "I have some damn good merlot stashed in the cellar. Let's get ourselves royally trashed."

~

"Nino," Ohno asked. "Are you drunk?"

"I make no promises about my ability to spell, count, or operate heavy machinery," Nino said, "but I wouldn't quite call myself drunk."

"Could you do me a favor?" Ohno asked. Nino leaned sideways against him.

Aiba had long since passed out with his head pillowed on Sho's lap. Sho was stroking his hair and humming as though he was lulling a small child to sleep. Jun was on his fourth glass, having taken his time to savor the flavor of a wine older than he was.

"Depends," Nino said. "Is it a sexual favor?"

Ohno considered saying yes. Really, really considered.

"No," he said. "I was just wondering if you could help me with a tattoo like yours."

Nino was quiet for a moment, before saying: "Are you sure you want one?"

"Yes," Ohno said. "If you'll let me."

Nino ran his fingers up and down Ohno's leg, tracing a path from his hip to his knee and back again. It was an absent-minded gesture as he lost himself in thought; Ohno didn't know which part of the proposition Nino was weighing so heavily, but either way, he hoped the answer would be yes.

"...Okay," Nino said at last. "But I get to pick the color."

They made their exit when Sho and Jun started arguing about the best cheese to go with the wine, heading for Aiba's bedroom to pick up the tattoo machine before continuing down the hall to Nino's room.

"I hope I don't kill you with it," Nino said, looking at the machine dubiously. "That would be really hard to explain to your mom tomorrow."

"She'll understand," Ohno said graciously.

"Where do you want it?" Nino asked. Ohno reached behind his back, tapping his left shoulder blade.

"Here," he said. "It has to be here."

"How come?" Nino asked.

Ohno wanted to tell him; he wasn't sure he should, considering the hesitant nature of their current relationship, but another louder part of him insisted that honesty with Nino was always the best policy. Nino deserved truth more than anyone he'd ever met.

"This way," Ohno said, "you'll always be just behind me; you'll always have my back."

Nino didn't have anything to say to that; instead, he wiped Ohno's skin clean with alcohol, his touch gentle. He was silent as he traced the kanji; Nino moved more slowly than Ohno, obviously taking care not to make any mistakes. Ohno bore the discomfort, knowing that if he asked to take a break, he might not have the guts to finish it.

Finally, the tattoo was completed. Nino let Ohno look at it between two mirrors; it was a deep, strong blue.

It was exactly the same color as his eye.

"Blue like the sky," Nino said softly as he pressed the dry bandage across it. "Like the ocean. Like things that are bigger than you and stronger than you and constant, unchanging."

Ohno had nothing to say to that; he didn't have the words to express the wave of feelings that washed over him as Nino spoke. For Nino to have such an image of him, such a _belief_ in him... there was something terrifying in it, at the same time as making him wish more than anything that he could live up to it.

Instead, he turned his body and met Nino's lips, kissing him soft and sure, rolling like waves on a beach; building like a rising tide.

"Ohno," Nino said quietly when they parted for breath, "I'm glad I met you."

Ohno prayed to any god that might be listening that tomorrow, Nino would not regret it.


	15. Chapter 15

Their plan was extremely complex, and it worried Jun. He knew better than anyone how good Aiba and Nino were at their respective talents, but Sho and Ohno remained relatively untested in the fight against the Ment. Sho had the mind to be formidable, but Jun wasn't sure how Ohno would fare.

"He was Force," Aiba reminded him over breakfast. "He's got knowledge we don't. That'll be useful." Jun finished his omelet in silence, running through every back-up plan at least twice before feeling somewhat prepared for what lay ahead.

The first task was outwardly simple: they needed to get their hands on a genuine Force uniform in order to duplicate it. It had to be a real one, too. Force uniforms contained identity strips that served like digital dog tags. Each uniform was coded to identity a specific wearer, and while Aiba was quite certain he could make a version that worked the same way, he needed an original to work off of.

"I have one," Ohno said, "but I left it behind. It's got a tracking system in it that they could have used to find me."

"Where did you leave it?" Nino asked him, a map spread out on the living room floor in front of him. One of his laptops was propped up on a couch cushion, tracking Ohno's mother throughout her day in prison.

"My apartment," Ohno said. "But the Force has to be all over it by now, right?"

"Probably," Nino said. "Won't stop me, though."

"How do you expect to get through a Ment housing facility to steal a Force uniform belonging to a defector?" Sho asked. He was curious, not incredulous, and Nino puffed a bit under the positive attention.

"Distractions!" he chirped. "Aiba's going to make me a big one." He and Aiba exchanged a look of self-satisfied glee, and Jun felt suddenly nervous again. Aiba and Nino could generally be trusted to be sensible about assignments, but sometimes they looked at each other and _smiled_ , and Jun could tell they were about to do something very stupid 'because we can'.

"Is he going to be okay?" Sho asked as Nino suited up and put on his skates. "Things are kind of crazy out there right now." Jun forced himself to smile reassuringly, putting a hand on Sho's shoulder and pitching his voice to sound comforting.

"He'll be fine," he said. "He does this all the time." He didn't like lying to Sho, but the truth was far more than Sho was prepared to deal with at the moment. They needed his head clear for what was coming up. He held back the question that rose to his lips when Aiba handed Nino a variety of small boxes, none bigger than a coin. Nino deposited them in his pockets, patting himself down and checking everything was in place.

Ohno rounded the corner, watching Nino check everything in silence. His face was twisted up in worry and Jun kept wondering if Ohno was going to actually do anything, or just stand there quietly. Abruptly, Ohno seemed to make a decision; he stepped forward and in one smooth movement, put his hand on Nino's cheek and pressed a kiss to his lips.

For a long moment, no one said anything at all. Then Ohno stepped back, his face set in a firm expression. Nino just looked incredibly surprised.

Aiba let out a hoot of encouragement. Nino scowled at him.

"Be careful," Ohno said softly. Nino didn't answer, but Jun knew it was because Nino didn't want to lie to Ohno and promise his safe return when there was absolutely no guarantee.

"I'm off," he said instead, stepping out the door and rolling away with a backwards wave.

Everyone watched him leave in an empty, gaping silence.

~

Nino made good time to Ohno's building, considering he was dodging patrols the entire way. His memory was his map; he never forgot a place once he'd been there, and even though he'd been drugged pretty heavily when he'd arrived at this place, going home had been somewhat easier to recall. He came up to the building and hid behind a power generator on the side.

"Hello," Nino greeted the machine brightly, pulling out a thin cable from a packet on his vest. "I'll be getting inside you, if you don't mind."

The generator had no outright protests, and Nino whipped out a small screen from yet another pocket. He was tracing the power distribution; in buildings like these, you could tell what was what just by looking at how much electricity they required to run. For a Force residence building, the most power would be directed towards security.

The path glowed a bright yellow on his screen. The color made him pause, admiring its strength, before taking one of the tiny boxes out of his pocket. He placed the box on top of the generator and backed away.

The trigger was a sound; he snapped his fingers. Instantly, all the lights just ahead of him went out. Windows clicked open. Doors let go of their latches. All of Nino's devices shut down; the only thing that still worked were the wheels on his skates. The box had blown out a powerful electromagnetic pulse that killed everything using power in the immediately vicinity.

Now was his chance to get in. Nino darted along a shadowy edge, hiding behind a vehicle.

There were two sentries at the front door, but the loss of power had put them in a bit of an odd situation. It not only knocked out security features, it knocked out their uniforms. One man was twitching strangely, the various weapons mounted on his suit having begun to splutter in a dangerous way; the other was shouting into his communications device, not having realized it wasn't working.

"What the _hell_ ," he snapped, annoyed. "Did the power grid blow?"

His partner twitched again.

"I'll check it. You stay here," the first man said, as if his friend could have possibly done anything else. As soon as he had rounded the corner, Nino strode forward. He walked right past the twitching sentry; the man had no way to stop him. The door slid open when he pushed it and he didn't pause before entering.

Now he just had to get all the way up.

~

"How is he going to make it up 89 floors without being seen?" Sho asked, drumming his fingers on his knees. Aiba grinned, a small screwdriver held between his teeth. He removed it to answer.

"He'll manage," Aiba said. "He's going to hate every second though."

~

Pulling open a door just behind the elevators, Nino stepped inside and closed the door behind him before sitting down and pulling off his skates. He looked up… and up… and up.

"89 flights," Nino growled, facing the staircase. It was going to be a long hike, but at least he could be relatively sure he wouldn't be seen; no one took the stairs anymore, especially in buildings more than 30 stories high. Most people forgot there were staircases at all.

It took him a little over fifteen minutes. He had to pause every ten flights or so to take some deep breaths and make sure he hadn't lost track of which floor he was on; it was also pitch-dark with the power out, and he had to pay close attention to make sure the only sounds he could hear were his own footsteps.

By his calculations, the power would come back in about ten more minutes. He hit the 89th floor and peeked out the door, checking for sentries.

Using a small mirror, he looked around the corner. There were four guards at the elevators, but they were distracted with their malfunctioning uniforms and communication devices. Only one guard was looking steadfastly at the elevators with his weapon leveled; Nino knew this was going to be the guy he'd have to fool. Still barefoot, he crept along the wall, away from the sentries, until he reached Ohno's apartment. The locks were still blown and all he had to do was push it open. The uniform was exactly where Ohno had said it was: in a box just inside the front door.

Nino stepped inside the apartment and shut the door silently behind him. He picked up the suit and looked for the ID tag Ohno had described. It was a small LED panel, and like everything else electronic, it was dark. The uniform was safe to wear. Nino slipped it on, stuffing his skates in a bag he'd brought expressly for this purpose. Luckily, he and Ohno were essentially the same size. He pulled the helmet on and checked his reflection in the glass of a photo framed on the wall.

He realized suddenly it was a photo of a much younger Ohno, probably in grade school, and a woman who could only have been his mother. Carefully, Nino removed the photo from the wall. He opened the frame and took the picture out, putting it in his pocket. Once he put the frame back, he was satisfied he was ready to go.

Ohno's suit was a slightly older model; it didn't have a barracuda attachment and all his weapons were kept at his station, so while certain features of the suit were not functioning, it still moved. Nino had to leave the lower part of the mask open to breathe, as the air filter ran on power. He'd noticed a few other guards with their mouths exposed though, so he didn't think it would be a problem.

Now he just had to trick them into believing he was one of them.

Nino crept out the door again before sliding further down the hall along the wall. All the doors were unlocked, and he slipped inside one silently, counted to ten, before bursting out loudly, tripping over the floor and stumbling towards the elevators. He did his best to make it look like his limbs weren't cooperating with him.

"What's going on?!" he yelped, approaching the sentries at the elevator. They looked at him, startled, unsure of where he'd come from.

"Where—" the guard Nino had noticed paying close attention to his post earlier began, but Nino cut him off.

"Sir!" he said, "I was on leave, Sir, but then the lights went out. Am I needed, Sir?" He saluted stiffly. The force officer looked at him with a scowl.

"We've lost power," he said. Nino let his jaw gape in mock-surprise.

"But—how?!" he squeaked. The officer winced at the pitch of his voice. He looked about to respond when suddenly the communications unit crackled and the lights returned. The EMP blast had worn off. Nino had to hurry before anyone asked him for ID.

"Sir!" a voice said over the comms. "The generator has been tampered with!"

The officer pointed at Nino imperiously before answering back, "I'm sending someone down to look. Do not leave your posts!" He pressed the call button for the elevator, and Nino saluted him when the doors opened before getting inside. He followed it all the way down and walked out the front door as easily as he'd walked in; the officers posted at the bottom merely pointed him towards the generator before returning to their original positions on either side of the entrance.

Nino made for the generator, removing the tiny box that the EMP blast had come from. It had been knocked aside like debris by the first Force officer to take a look; it was easy enough to pocket once more. Glancing around the make sure he hadn't been followed, Nino slipped away and hit the streets.

He jogged, talking continuously to himself. This gave the outward illusion that he was on his way to meet someone, or lagging behind his unit. The uniform was enough to make people either overlook him (other Force) or hide from the sound of the boots clacking on the pavement (everyone else.) It took him half the time to make it back to The Place than it had taken him to leave.

"Can't be spotted now," he muttered to himself, ducking behind a dumpster to take the uniform off. If he was seen wearing it too near the opening to the bar, it might invite unwanted Force attention to a location that had thus far stayed under their radar. The uniform was bulky and heavy to carry; he wished he could have just worn it all the way back. It didn't really help that he felt extremely safe wearing it, serene in his total anonymity.

Reaching the front door of their home, he knocked. Jun pulled it open so quickly Nino half-expected it to fly off the hinges.

"Well?" Jun asked.

Nino held the suit aloft, triumphant. Jun's expression broke into a relieved smile as they both went to the living room where everyone else was waiting.

"Mission accomplished," Nino announced proudly. Sho looked truly impressed from his sit on the couch; Ohno looked at Nino and was clearly relieved just to see him _alive_.

"Nice!" Aiba said, taking the suit from Nino's hold. "I'm going to get started on this. Ohno, I might need your help."

"In a second," Nino said, "I have to talk to him first." Aiba nodded and grabbed Sho by the elbow.

"Come on, Brainy," he said to Sho, "let's see how useful you can be!" Sho spluttered the entire walk back to Aiba's lab. Jun looked Nino up and down once more in silence, reassuring himself that Nino wasn't lying and was, in fact, in one piece.

"I'll be in the kitchen," he said quietly, making his exit. Once he was sure Jun was gone, Nino knelt down on the carpet next to Ohno. Ohno brought a hand to Nino's face, warm and gentle. Nino closed his eyes to enjoy the feeling for just a heartbeat more, before pulling the photograph from his pocket.

"I thought you might... want this," he explained softly. He would have given anything for a photo of his family; a real one, with everyone smiling and happy. All he had were memories, images that lost clarity with each passing year. He saw them most vividly in dreams, but during his waking hours, their features were increasingly hard to recall.

Ohno took the photo in silence. He studied it, tracing his mother's face with a finger.

"Thank you," Ohno said at last, sincere. He looked up, meeting Nino's gaze. "Nino, we're—we're going to get her back, right?"

Nino felt a wave of cold fear run down his spine. But this was not the time for fear.

"We'll get her back," he promised.

"Thank you," Ohno said again, pressing the photo to his chest.

"Now go help Aiba," Nino said, standing up. "We're going to need every advantage you can give us." Ohno nodded, getting to his feet and shuffling to Aiba's lab, his eyes still glued to the photograph.

Nino only hoped it would be enough.


	16. Chapter 16

Aiba really pulled all the stops out on replicating the Force uniforms. He had them finished in a matter of hours, complete with ID tags that generated false ID information if they got checked. He couldn't make them barracuda attachments though, as Ohno's uniform never had one.

"I don't think I could have made one anyway," Aiba said quietly to Nino, and Nino knew he wasn't talking about a lack of ability.

They fit perfectly; Jun was extremely impressed at Aiba's ability to judge their relative sizes and change the pattern accordingly. Aiba was the tallest of the group, but he still didn't look out of place. There were four uniforms including Ohno's; Sho would be staying behind.

"I memorized the code book," he promised them, "so I should be able to interpret whatever they shoot your way."

"And I changed your ID tag," Aiba told Ohno, "so they won't know who you are."

"How's my mom?" Ohno asked. Nino was zipping up his own uniform, full of mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, he felt much safer knowing that he'd blend right in. On the other, there was something absolutely sickening about dressing like the men that had murdered so many people he cared about. He glanced at his laptop, the tiny blinking dot showing she was in her cell. There were four other people in it now; the Force had started overloading the cells to hold the extra people they were arresting as they trawled the City Limits.

"In her cell," Nino said. "Sho will tell us if she moves."

"Are you ready to get us past patrols?" Jun asked Ohno as Aiba adjusted his helmet. Ohno was going to be their street guide; he thought he could probably get them past most of the other patrols by actually following them in a slightly modified pattern. Instead of looking like they were extraneous, they'd look like they'd been added to a pre-existing patrol.

"I can get us to HQ," Ohno said, "but I've never been inside lock-up, I have no idea what it's like in there."

"I do," Nino said. Sho and Ohno looked at him, waiting for him to elaborate. He didn't.

"Nino's going to guide us once we get in. If we get off track, Sho's got an old map to reference that should give us some idea," Jun repeated, making sure everyone was on the same page. "The most important thing is keeping together and not doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We need to get in and out quickly."

"Guys," Nino said quietly, "If anything goes wr—"

"Nothing is going to go wrong," Aiba interrupted him. "Don't jinx us."

"So are we ready?" Sho asked, holding the laptop. Nino guessed it was only in his hands so he could resist the urge to hug everyone.

"Gentlemen," Aiba said with a grin, "Let's go break the law."

"Which one?" Ohno asked.

" _All_ the laws," Aiba said, clapping his gloved hands together and rubbing them eagerly.

Privately, Ohno thought Aiba was actually kind of scary sometimes.

~

Ohno had never made it very far up in the ranks of the Force. He'd never led a patrol, he'd never been senior to anyone except new recruits, and he'd never arrested someone by himself. But he'd watched his Patrol leaders do all these things with the eyes of someone who remembered what power looked like. Most importantly, he remembered enough to imitate it.

Nino didn't need much instruction; he'd been chased by Patrols often enough to pick up all the most important mannerisms. But Jun and Aiba were having problems staying in formation and remembering not to speak. Aiba had rigged their communicators to work a bit differently from the real thing; they could hear other transmissions, but in order to transmit on the same frequency, they needed to press an extra button. The automatic frequency they were sharing along with Sho was a rarely used one that had limited interference. Ohno kept having to remind them to stop looking around so much.

"We have to look like we know where we're going," he explained after the fourth time telling Aiba to stop gaping.

"Pretend like you've been outside before, please," Nino drawled at him.

"Sorry," Aiba said sheepishly. "It's been a few years since I left the Limits."

They were only a few blocks from HQ when they ran into a second patrol. Ohno stiffened immediately; something about the posture of the leader rang upsettingly familiar to him, and he realized it was his old patrol leader. They couldn't see each other's faces through the helmets, but he held his shoulders back like a steel rod ran between them.

If they spoke, he might recognize Ohno's voice. Quickly, on the frequency only their small team could here, he said, "Guys, I think that's my boss."

Jun didn't falter. He stepped forward, back straight and voice snappish as he said on the Force frequency, "Sir. We've been alerted to a possible fugitive in the area, Sir."

"Fugitive?" Ohno's former leader said, sounding suspicious. "Explain."

"A defector, Sir," Jun said smoothly. "A conscript. He was seen four blocks from here, possibly injured."

"Injured?" The man said. He paused as if considering what Jun was telling him. Then the stiffness in his shoulders relaxed, and he stepped closer, speaking in a more relaxed tone.

Ohno's hackles rose. Something was not right. He couldn't remember ever seeing his boss like this; the man was practically made of steel; he never bent, he never relaxed, he never gossiped. His entire existence was stiff formality. This wasn't him being friendly to a fellow patrolman; this was something else.

It was a trap.

"Damned defectors," the man said. "I read that memo this morning about the pair from unit 49."

 _There._

"Jun," Ohno said on their private frequency, "There's no unit 49. There are no units with the numbers 4 or 9 _anywhere_ in the Force."

Jun's spine stiffened even more as he caught the tone of desperation in Ohno's words. It was a trick, designed to give them away. He injected a practiced tone of pure rage into his voice before answering the officer.

"I wouldn't be too concerned about defections from imaginary units, when we have actual cowards among us, wouldn't you agree?" His voice was pure venom, and Ohno got the feeling the fury was completely real. Jun had a lot of anger towards the Force, and all of it was funneled into this single communication.

To his credit, Ohno's old boss seemed convinced. His shoulders snapped back and he made a complex gesture with one hand that caused all the men standing behind him to straighten their weapons.

"If the rat bastard is here," the man hissed, "we'll find him."

"Glad to hear it," Jun snapped. "We'll be returning to headquarters for assignment updates." He made a complex hand gesture of his own, and Ohno realized that Jun must have memorized it as the officer had done it. Once again, Ohno found himself relieved that Jun and the others were on _his_ side; he'd really hate to be up against them now.

As they turned the corner and went down the street leading to HQ, Sho's voice rang in their ears.

"How'd you know about the trap question?" he said. "It's not in the handbook anywhere."

"It's a hang-over from pre-Ment sensibilities," Ohno explained. "The old word for 4 sounds the same as the word for 'death', and 9 sounds like 'suffering'. It was traditional not to use those numbers when naming things, so when the first patrol units were being defined, they automatically skipped those numbers out of habit."

"Okay, but that doesn't explain how the hell you knew that," Nino pointed out.

"I used to speak the old language in school," Ohno said, "and my mother speaks it at home. She believes in the superstition."

"I'd forgotten about that," Sho said, sounding nostalgic. "I think my mother believed it too, actually."

"Handy," Aiba said, "but we still need to get moving, guys."

That's right; they were working on a strict timeline. Ohno's mother only had hours left, and they still had to break into one of the most heavily fortified buildings in the Ment.

It had just better work.

~

Nino was mapping everything as they went along. His memory was working on overdrive to commit every turn, every street, every door to his visual perception of the place. The Force uniform dulled his sense of colors, leaving him less to work with that usual. He'd studied the maps given to Sho very, very carefully and asked Ohno a few pointed layout questions, but he had to be careful not to make it seem like he was looking for information unrelated to Jun's plan.

He didn't want them to know what he was planning; it would only endanger them unnecessarily. It was best for everyone if he did it alone.

They reached HQ a few minutes later; it was chaotic. Patrols were driving up with huge vans full of people they'd arrested from the City Limits; Jun, Aiba and Nino had to bite back cries of horror as they began to recognize faces. Aiba made a noise in his throat, low and pained, when he saw a pair of Force patrolmen dragging a young woman from a van. She'd been beaten almost beyond recognition, and it was unclear if she was merely unconscious, or dead.

"Mariko," Aiba said, sounding like the name physically hurt him to say.

"Oh god," Jun said, horror in every breath.

Nino couldn't watch. It was too much like that day, when his mother had been beaten into some horrible, broken thing that wouldn't talk with him again, tease him again, hold him again. He couldn't stand watching even more people that he couldn't save.

"Guys," Sho's voice said gently in their comms. "You need to go."

"Why," Aiba asked, his voice cracking. " _Why_ are they—"

"Let's go find out," Ohno said, his voice darker and laced with an anger none of them had heard from him before. Suddenly their mission became something more than just rescuing Ohno's mother. Suddenly, they knew that they couldn't just leave this place with one, lone woman.

"We're going to get them all," Jun said. "Every last living soul is coming out of there with us."

No one had any argument to that.

"There's a group going in," Nino pointed out. "If we hurry we can grab the door right behind them."

"They'll be checking IDs—" Ohno started, but Sho's voice interrupted him.

"I don't think they are," he said. "The numbers of people they're dragging in there are in the hundreds by now. There's no way they have time to be checking every single ID, and they don't have any reason to suspect someone entering in a uniform. Most defectors would be staying as far away from here as they can."

"So we just walk in like we belong?" Jun said, sounding skeptical.

"Well," Sho said, and suddenly he sounded extremely uncomfortable. "Actually, you're going to have to… probably, um."

Nino made the leap. For a second, his vision swam with a combination of fury and disgust.

"We're going to have to take a prisoner in," he finished for Sho. Everyone whipped around to look at him, and Nino didn't need to see their faces to know they were horrified. "We can't walk in empty-handed. It's suspicious."

"I can't," Aiba said, taking a step backwards. "I can't, Nino. I can't—those people didn't do anything, I can't just _drag_ my _friends_ into that place—"

"We don't have any choice," Nino snapped. "We have to take them in if we want to get _anyone_ out!"

"How can you do this?" Jun asked. He sounded so angry, but controlled. "Your mother—"

"I couldn't save her," Nino said, before the words could leave Jun's mouth. "But I can-- _we_ can save them. Guys, it's the only way."

"He's right," Ohno confirmed sadly. "They won't stop us if we have prisoners."

"But—but what if—"Aiba started, but Nino cut him off.

"Don't jinx us," he said. For a long moment, they all stared at each other in silence. And then as one, they turned towards the vans unloading, and began to walk. They got in the queue of Force patrol men lifting people from the vans. Nino led them, heaving an elderly man from the floor. Ohno picked up a little girl; he put his gloved hands on either side of her head to keep her from turning it. Outwardly, it looked like a controlling gesture, but Nino realized Ohno was doing it so she couldn't see the gruesome beatings on either side of her. Jun picked up a young man; Aiba, a young woman.

He could hear Aiba speaking across their locked communications line.

"I'm sorry," he said. "It's only for a little while. I'm so sorry. I'm—I'm so sorry."

It got them through the doors. They lined up, handing off their prisoners to the warden checking each new arrest into the computer system. Ohno watched the little girl go, shoulders hunched guiltily. The warden looked pretty damn upset himself, Nino noticed after handing off the old man. Aiba's apologies didn't stop until the young woman disappeared from his sight.

"Alright," Jun said. "Now we've got to go down to the cell blocks."

"It should be about 400 meters ahead of you," Sho said in their ears.

"Wait," Ohno said suddenly, looking around.

"What?" Sho asked. "Is it different from the map?"

Ohno looked around, before saying slowly, "Where's Nino?"

Jun, Aiba and Ohno looked around them. There were Force members everywhere, carrying prisoners and loading weapons, talking to the warden, talking to their lead officers—and every single one of them were real Force.

Nino was nowhere to be seen.


	17. Chapter 17

The cellblock was honestly not hard to find, which left Nino feeling completely guilt-free about his decision to separate from the group. He was far too busy being anxious about other things to have room for concern about whether or not Jun could be counted on to walk in a straight line as directed by Sho.

Unfortunately, Sho had much less confidence in himself.

"Nino!?" he squawked in Nino's ear. "Nino, where are you!? What are you doing?! Ni—"

"Shut _up_ ," Nino hissed. He was walking down a fairly crowded hallway that branched off from the main route towards holding. If he spoke too loudly, he'd draw attention to himself.

"What the hell are you doing!?" Sho said again, and Nino noticed that Sho seemed to be the only one questioning Nino's disappearance at all. 

"You've got something to do, right?" Aiba's voice said calmly, carrying over the silence after Sho's question.

"Do it properly," Jun added, equally serene. Nino felt a wave of warmth just knowing that they understood; there were a few things he had to do. It didn't mean he was leaving them to the mercy of the Ment—he just needed to get some answers.

"Be safe," Ohno added quietly. When had Ohno started to understand him so well? When had he really had a chance to get this close to people so quickly? When did Ohno's approval become something he wanted to have?

"Sho-chan," Aiba said, "turn to channel two. It's just you and Nino on there."

Of course Aiba had planned for this. Of course. There was a faint buzzing and a click sound, before Sho's voice came through again. He sounded less terrified and more irritated.

"Are you going to scold me?" Nino said lightly.

"It wouldn't help," Sho said, absolutely resigned.

"Not in the slightest," Nino agreed, glad no one could see his face under his mask. He shouldn't be smiling, not even wryly. "I need directions to the biggest computer terminal you can find."

Sho made a humming noise of consideration before offering, "There's an intake hub near lock up—"

"Bigger," Nino said. "It's probably unmarked, but has a lot of power redirected to it. Follow the electricity, not the floor plan."

"Is this how you broke into my house?" Sho asked. 

"No, your house was much easier than that," Nino assured him. Before Sho had a chance to respond, Nino was grabbed by the arm and jerked backwards into a dark hallway. A voice hissed in his ear.

"If you make a sound, they'll hear us. So don't."

Nino tired to figure out how to signal Sho without speaking, but it turned out he didn't need to. A woman loomed close to his masked face. She was young, probably not much older than Nino himself, but her face was cautious and calculating. She had long, dark hair and a tattoo of a vine of some kind curling delicately around her throat and towards her shoulder.

"Tell Sakurai he owes me. _A lot._ "

"Sho," Nino said, "There's a woman here who wants you to know—"

"Mao," Sho sighed with relief. "She found you. I will give her anything she wants, I already promised her."

"Mao-chan?" Nino said hesitantly.

"That's Kobayashi-san to you," she said in an iron-clad tone of voice. Nino swallowed his teasing immediately, because he got the impression she would kill him and leave his body out for all to see if he mildly annoyed her. "So what, exactly, are you looking for?"

"A computer terminal," he said. "I have to look something up." She raised an eyebrow at him, but didn't comment or inquire further. Nino was rather relieved. She stepped out into the hallway boldly, and he hesitated behind her. She looked over her shoulder, nodding her head curtly.

"Hurry up," she said, her voice crisp and commanding. "I don't have all day."

"Mao works in the security division of the Ment," Sho said. "She's our main insider. I sent a message saying you might need help, but I wasn't sure she'd get it. I wasn't sure she was still... well, alive." Nino realized he could follow her wherever she went without getting a second look because she actually belonged here. This was better than any plan he'd slapped together himself.

"Lead on, my mistress," he said, strolling just behind her. "I am at your command."

"Punk," she said with a smile.

~  
"I don't understand," Aiba said in a hollow voice. "Where is… everyone?" He looked around the cellblock, unable to process the sight of every single cell being not only open, but completely unoccupied. 

"Did they move them?" Jun asked, scanning around the room for a message or instruction of some kind. He saw nothing of the sort, and buzzed Sho.

"Whatever you're doing over there, we need you here," he snapped. Sho responded with remarkable speed and Jun once again found himself pleased they'd ended up with him on their side.

"What's wrong?"

"It's empty," Jun said. "Not a soul in sight and we never heard anything about moving people to another block. If our information is bad, we're in trouble."

"I don't think it's our information," Ohno said quietly. "We calculated that they'd be filling up, right?"

"Yeah," Aiba agreed. "They were going to run out of space pretty soon, and then—"

"Then they'd clear house," Ohno said. "There's no reason to keep anyone around that they don't plan on releasing." He flipped open the panel on his wrist guard with a map on it, tracing a line on the display with his fingertip. "They don't have a proper holding yard or anything, so the best place to put a crowd you don't care about killing each other is probably either here, or here." He jabbed his finger at two large open rooms.

"What's in there?" Aiba asked. 

"I think it used to be for trials," Ohno said. "Before all of this, anyone arrested got a fairly good chance of getting to explain themselves and possibly be cleared of charges."

"But then the Ment decided it was never wrong about charges, and they dismissed or eliminated all the legal personnel," Jun added. "I remember it from school."

Ohno nodded. "They took out all the furniture, but the room still has a door with a lock on it, so it's likely they're just shoving people in there for now."

"Do you remember where they are?" Jun asked, already looking around and trying to get his bearings. It was all well and good to memorize a map, but real life was proving a bit harder to follow thanks to several 'updates' that hadn't been recorded in the floor plans. Ohno led them to the suspected holding pens, but on the way, they hit checkpoints.

"What the hell are they so jumpy about?" Aiba said under his breath as they made it through a third. Ohno shook his head, having no answer.

"There's a lot of people in here, and they're talking to each other," Jun pointed out.

"That would make anyone nervous," Sho agreed, "although this is pretty extreme, even for them."

Ohno made a noise in his throat, and attention snapped back to him. He hesitated before actually speaking, considering the situation carefully and trying to decide if his instincts were doing him a service here, or hindering him. Sho made the choice for him.

"Tell us," he instructed firmly.

"There's something weird about all of this," he said slowly. "More than what's happening here. Why did they snap in the first place? Why have they suddenly gone from stamping everyone down to rounding them up? Things were working before this. We had the outer limits, but it was under control. As far as I know, there still wasn't anything like an organized rebellion about to happen."

He glanced back over his shoulder to the last checkpoint down the hallway.

"Why would they risk people seeing how many of them there are in comparison to the Force?" he finished.

"We're missing something," Aiba guessed. "Something big. They still have an advantage of some kind, or they wouldn't be doing it. The Ment is cruel, not stupid."

"I just don't know what it could be," Ohno said, shaking his head in confusion.

"Let's worry about that later," Jun said firmly. "We've got other things to be worrying about than why they've lost their ever-loving minds."

They made it to the makeshift holding pens without further incident. Ohno turned the handle, pushing a huge door open, before stopping dead in his tracks. Aiba and Jun bumped into his back.

"What?!" Jun snapped, rubbing his elbow where it had collided with a doorframe.

Ohno said nothing. He just pointed.

The room was large and old. The flooring hadn't been removed, and there was a heavy layer of dust on every surface—except the places where people had clearly been shoved in. Hand prints dotted the place, and personal items like gloves or scarves littered the floor. Several wet spots marked where especially frightened prisoners had sat and lost control of their bladders. The entire room had taken on a horrible smell, but the three couldn't detect it through the masks of their uniforms.

It was also completely empty.

"This isn't right," Ohno said, beginning to sound panicked. "This can't be right. They had to be here, there isn't anywhere else. They _were_ here." He wrapped his arms tightly around himself, trying to stave off the fear rising in his throat. His mother was here, somewhere, and he couldn't save her if they couldn't find her. They had to find her. _He_ had to find her.

Aiba put a steadying hand on his shoulder. 

"Breathe," Jun reminded him, ever calm and collected. Ohno felt a small wave of relief wash over him; as long as these people were with him, they could do this. He had to believe that.

He didn't know what would happen if that stopped being true.

"Hey, guys," Aiba said, pointing at the wall. "Do you think we could follow that?"

There was a drag running along the side of the room, dust having been wiped off by someone's shoulder. If the room had housed people, they would be filthy now. And as they examined the doorframe, all three realized the dust left a highly visible trail.

"Sho, we're going off the map," Aiba said. There was no reply. "Sho? Sho!"

"I'm here," Sho buzzed in, sounding distracted. "I think they're getting close to me, though. There's a lot of noise upstairs."

"They can't find the house," Jun assured him. "It's underground for a reason."

"Noted," Sho said, his attention clearly elsewhere.

"Let's go," Jun said to the others. Together, they followed the filth down the long hallway, away from the check points. The smears continued an already ugly story: intermixed with the brown-grey dust were more worrying colors only Ohno could see. A long swath of red, the edges darkening as they dried, told a tale of violence none of them really wanted to consider. It was too hard to deal with everything right now; they just had to keep moving and hope they found their way.

The trail ended at the door of a large room. The door was clean and stark, cold steel set into solid concrete. The hallway leading to it was quiet and the door had no handle; there was a small panel to one side, with three glowing buttons. One green, one red, one blue.

The air was also dead still.

"What the hell is this?" Jun asked the empty space. "Another holding room?"

"No," Ohno said. "That's not right. It's something else. Sho, tell us something?"

"It's on the map, kind of," Sho said. "It's not labeled, but it's got tons of power going into it. I thought it would be a computer room of some kind."

"Computer rooms don't have huge, fuck-off doors," Aiba pointed out.

Ohno looked at the wall of steel in front of him. It bothered him in a way he couldn't explain; there was something wrong here. It was too quiet, too empty. This room clearly meant something, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was. He just felt a sick writhing in his stomach, nameless apprehension of something unknown and dangerous.

That was it. It felt _dangerous._

"Guys," Ohno started, "I think—"

There was a clatter behind them. They turned around, and found themselves face-to-face with a full unit of Force. They saluted, but no one except the leader moved. He stepped forward slowly, and each man behind him raised their weapons, point straight at Ohno, Aiba, and Jun's chests. Jun stepped in front of the other two, instinctively placing his body between them, but he was violently shoved aside. His back hit the wall, hard, knocking the wind out of him. Aiba tried to help him, but he got clubbed in the head with the back of a Barracuda for his trouble; he landed on his knees, dizzy as stars danced across his vision.

"Ohno Satoshi," the leader said, and Ohno felt his heart stop.

"Sir," he said, sounding calmer than he felt.

"I wouldn't have pegged you for a deserter," his old boss said casually. His tone was betrayed by his aggressive stance. "I definitely wouldn't have guessed you were a traitor."

Ohno tried to think. He needed time, but there was no way the Force was going to let him have it. His boss growled the command to take them, and before anyone had the chance to fight back, they'd pulled open the huge door and shoved them in. All three men ended up on the floor; Jun even felt his helmet clunk on the floor.

The door slammed in front of them, clicking as a lock slid in place. They were trapped in darkness.

"Fuck," Jun said eloquently. "Sho?"

There was silence. He looked at the others, but they hadn't reacted to his statement either. Frowning, Jun looked at his uniform.

Every light was out. He pulled off his helmet.

"Guys?" Jun said. "We've got a problem." Aiba and Ohno pulled off their helmets too, having realized that communications were dead.

Ohno felt a hand on his elbow. He turned, ready to smack the touch away, when a quiet voice stalled him completely.

"Satoshi?" his mother asked.


	18. 18

Ohno did not waste a heartbeat; he flung his arms around his mother, squeezing her with all the joy and relief in his heart. She wasn't dead. She was here, alive, next to him. He loosened his hold slightly as he became aware of how frightening thin she was; his mother had always been petite, and she only came up to his nose, but this was...

He felt a curl of ice-cold fury rolling in his stomach as her shoulder blades stuck out against his arms.

His mother didn't seem to mind him nearly squeezing the lights out of her; she hugged him just as tightly, raising one hand to the back of his head and smoothing it down his hair, murmuring comforts. Ohno lost it then; he wrapped his arms around her waist, dropped his head to her shoulder, and let the tears he'd been holding back for so long fall. She cradled him, rocking them back and forth gently.

"Hush," she said softly. "None of this, now. It isn't the time."

Jun and Aiba stood to the side, waiting for their eyes to acclimate to the darkness. But they never seemed to do it, and Jun realized with a sick feeling that there was no light to acclimate _to._ It was utterly and totally dark. The buttons on their uniforms didn't even glow now.

Ohno pulled himself together after a moment, straightening back up and stepping back a bit from his mother. But one hand remained on the small of her back, as if he couldn't quite manage to let go of her completely now.

"How on earth did you find us?" his mother asked him. "It's not over yet, is it?"

"Is what over?" Jun asked with a frown no one could see.

"This," Ohno's mother replied primly. "This... overturning. No one quite knows what's going on, only that it's insane."

"It's not over," Aiba replied grimly. "Not even close, I'd say." Jun nodded his agreement, momentarily forgetting that no one could see him do it.

"These guys helped me get in," Ohno explained. "They're amazing Mom, they can do anything."

"Not _anything,_ " Jun hurried to amend at the same time as Aiba brightly responded with a "Yep!" Jun stuck out his elbow in the direction of where Aiba seemed to be, but he only hit empty air. It wasn't clear if Aiba had dodged, or simply wasn't there to begin with.

"So... where are we?" Aiba asked. Jun could tell he was trying to sound casual to mask something much more concerned.

"We don't know," Ohno's mother said darkly.

"We?" Ohno questioned. There was a sudden shuffling sound of many bodies at once. From the direction, Ohno guessed that they standing up from where they'd been huddled on the ground. He couldn't see anything, but he heard small whimpers, groans, and wheezy breathing that suggested however many people were here, most of them were injured in some way. Squeezing his mother again, Ohno thanked the Gods that while she seemed severely underfed, she was otherwise unhurt.

"We," his mother confirmed. "There's about forty of us in here, not that you can tell." 

"There's… something else," a strange voice added. It was male, older, but something in the way he spoke sounded like there was a problem with his face. The sounds were warped slightly.

"Don't talk," a younger female voice said quickly. "You'll start bleeding again." She moved closer to them, arriving at Jun's left side and announcing her presence by clearing her throat. It was a good thing she hadn't just touched him; he was so wound up he probably would have shoved her away.

"This room is… wrong," she said, sounding confused by her own words. Ohno's mother picked up the explanation.

"It's dark. We tried to find lights, but there aren't any. No fixtures, no settings. It's also enormous."

"How big?" Aiba asked. Jun suspected Aiba was already trying to find a place for this on his mental picture of the map.

"We found the sides," Ohno's mother said. "They're about four hundred meters in each direction. But the back…"

"Is it far?" Ohno asked. There was a long period of dead silence before the young woman said, "We don't know."

"We started walking back," Ohno's mother said. "We had to stop when we found... everyone."

"Who?" Aiba asked.

"Everyone they brought in first," Ohno's mother said. "They're all back there. When we walked back, we found them." She barely paused."They're dead."

Jun and Aiba reacted powerfully; Aiba gasped, horror in the very sound, and Jun reached out for him to steady himself. At some point Aiba had moved closer to him, so it was easy to wrap a hand around Aiba's bicep. Jun squeezed, and he felt Aiba move closer still in response.

How many of these people did they know? How many of them had they seen torn from their homes and thrown into a truck to be dragged here to their deaths? How many of their friends laid in this gaping darkness, corpses that no one would ever be able to see and identify?

What the hell was going on here for things to fall apart so quickly?

"Dead?" Ohno asked, sounding as disbelieving and Jun and Aiba felt. "All of them?"

"There's no one alive back there," the man said hoarsely. "We called out, but no one answered."

"We didn't want—we couldn't walk any further. You could smell it all; they've been bringing people in here for more than two days," Ohno's mother said. "We don't know where the back is, but it's far enough for several hundred people to be here with more than enough space to spare.

"And we don't know how they died," she added. 

There was something about this room that was bothering Ohno. It wasn't just the darkness, or the size, or the lack of electronics function. Something else was disturbingly _wrong_ here, and he'd had enough experience with his instincts by now to trust the way his stomach was twisting. The hair on the back of his neck stood up and he didn't know why.

He closed his eyes; it was just as dark with them open, but closing his eyelids was a signal to the rest of his senses to kick in. He pictured the front of the room, and that immoveable door. He pictured the button panel, colored in a way only he could see. He pictured, not entirely willingly, the mass of corpses at the end of the room. He searched for the rotten smell his mother and the other prisoners were describing.

Ohno couldn't smell it. Hundreds of dead, and he couldn't catch a whiff.

"…Can you smell them now?" he asked, confused.

"I don't smell anything," Aiba said. Jun gathered himself before agreeing.

"No," Jun said. "They must be farther away than we think."

"How far do they have to be where you can't smell it?" Ohno asked. "After two days?"

It was in that very second that Ohno realized what felt so sickeningly wrong here. It wasn't just the people that were dead.

So was the air. Not a breeze stirred; not a breath moved across his face. There was no flow where they were, so close to a door. No hissing. No mechanical fans. No rushing at gaps.

Nothing.

The room was sealed, completely, from top to bottom and as far back as it went. And that was far enough to hide hundreds of dead even as they rotted. 

He'd heard of this place, once. It was an idea suggested by one of his commanders. No one had believed for a second it would happen; it was too disgusting, even for the Force.

And yet here they were, standing in exactly the place imagined by a sick, twisted mind.

"I know how they died," Ohno said. "And I know how we're going to die next."

~

Mao wasted no time in getting Nino where he wanted to go. She walked at a brisk pace that left Nino half-trotting after her. She was slightly taller than him and wasn't burdened by the weight of a full Force uniform. Her heeled boots clicked on the flooring and Nino noted internally that even the _sound_ of her moving sounded commanding. She led him in a winding maze of the building through several checkpoints; she always glided past as though it wasn't even there, and Nino followed her closely enough to escape as well.

She finally turned down a darkened hallway. She gestured imperiously at a very plain and unassuming door.

"You go in," she said when he stopped and waited for her to enter first. "I'll wait here."

"Won't that look strange?" Nino asked. She frowned at him.

"If you're going to do something stupid—don't give me that look, I know your type. You're going to do something stupid no matter what I, or Sakurai, say. I don't want to get caught up in your mess, thank you very much." Nino wasn't sure how she knew he was making a face under his helmet, but she seemed like the type of woman to secretly have psychic powers. Or something.

"Mao's position is kind of important to hold right now," Sho said apologetically in his ear. "She really can't afford to get seen doing something suspicious."

"I got it," Nino said, holding his hands up defensively. "Nobody wants to be in the pool when I start splashing." He saluted at Mao, deliberately doing it in as sloppy a manner as he could. The barest twitch of her mouth betrayed the smile she very nearly smothered.

"Don't get yourself killed, kid," she recommended. "Sakurai is fond of you and he's too nerdy to make friends easily."

"I'm not—that isn't— _Mao!_ " Sho babbled. He seemed to have forgotten she couldn't hear him. Nino didn't pass on Sho's indignation, choosing instead to hold out a hand for her, a silent promise.

She took it, squeezed once, and let go. Nino turned to the door that could easily open into a closet.

Or a trap. He wasn't sure which would be worse, at this point.

He pushed it open, quickly shutting the door behind him. For a moment, everything was silent and dark. Then in a wave of light rolling out from the door, the room lit up. There were computer screens and controls everywhere; Nino's eleven-odd screens paled in comparison. Things hovered and slid through the air on crystal-clear tracks, moving forwards and back apparently of their own volition. Things flashed across the screens; he saw a riot, a man being trampled in the street; a checkpoint where one Force member was bodily shoving another against a wall and ripping the weapons from his hands; a quiet hallway that ended in a huge, blank door; the half-empty prison floors.

He didn't have time to sift through any of this. Besides, none of that was as important as what he needed to do.

"Nino?" Sho asked. He was a bit fuzzy, cutting in and out.

"Signal's bad," Nino said, glancing around and confirming he was the only person in the room. It seemed strange for such a big control center to be abandoned, but he wasn't going to question his luck at this point. Sho buzzed again, but Nino couldn't make it out at all.

"Wait, I can't hear you in this place."

He stepped forward, and three screens rushed forward to welcome him. A control pad also slid to the front, settling itself comfortably at waist height. Nino reached out to stroke the side of a screen, pleased with the programming that caused it to appear eager for instruction. It was the smallest details of systems that made the difference, he thought. 

Nino tore off one glove; not having fingerprints made bare hands a non-issue. There were other concerns though, such as his face, so he left his helmet on. Tucked underneath his thumbnail was an impossibly small jump drive. It carried the hack he'd spent the better part of two years working on, but he had to find a port before he could run it. He glanced around the control panel, but he saw nothing.

"Um," he said, feeling silly for doing it. "Do you have—may I have a jump port please?" 

To his complete surprise, the system helpfully whooshed forwards a small panel with several ports on it. He inserted his disk and waited. It only took a few seconds; the processing speed on a system this large was more than enough. At first, the interface squawked in alarm, sensing his hack beginning to open itself. But he silenced it quickly as his self-designed interface rolled across the screens.

"Just like home," he murmured to himself. His fingers danced across the keys, setting off processes and coding he knew back to front. This was his baby, his hope, the moment he'd been waiting for since… since he was too young to be plagued with the desire to learn what he needed to know.

One small screen settled itself in front of him, and nine others rolled back and arranged themselves into one large display. A search database opened up like a flower over the host interface, sending out roots into every niche and cranny of code and hijacking it for Nino's purpose.

Once it had settled itself, a simple parser appeared in the center of the data-flower. Nino took a deep breath before entering two words:

NINOMIYA KAZUKO

The data-flower pulsed as the question rolled through the information. Files began popping up around the display; photographs, papers, marriage certificates, birth certificates, and—

The parser flashed before pulling back. Another box had appeared. Nino sucked in a breath as his mother's face, smiling warmly, greeted him. It was an older photograph, probably just after he was born. She looked tired, but not desperate or afraid like he remembered. Beneath the photographer, he saw the words he knew all along would be there.

NINOMIYA KAZUKO  
STATUS: DECEASED

He knew it would say it. That didn't make the pain lessen in the slightest. After one last moment of seeing his mother's almost-happy face, he waved it out with snap of his arm. The image threw itself off screen and out of sight immediately.

The parser returned. He steeled himself again. He entered another name.

NINOMIYA KAZUE

The system took longer to come up with an answer. A few photos flitted in and out, all of a very young girl. Her class photograph from kindergarten passed by, as well as several shots of her about five years older. They looked like they'd been taken from behind something; he wanted to study them closer. His memories of his mother had faded, but his sister had been taken before, and he remembered her even less. Even young, she had the same mouth as his mother, and their father's strong nose. A birth certificate floated by, then a photograph jumped forward with text beneath.

Nino closed his eyes. He could close the program now; he'd never have to know. He'd never have to see it. He could go on, innocent to her fate.

Or he could finally have closure. He opened his eyes.

The photo was of a twelve-year old girl. She had a black eye; she was holding an arrest slate with her name on it.

NINOMIYA KAZUE  
STATUS: UNKNOWN

It took several steadying breaths before Nino could inhale properly. He kept re-reading the screen, completely thrown.

She was alive. She could be anywhere on the planet, but to the knowledge of the Ment, she was alive.

"—no!" Sho's voice crackled. "An—r—me!"

"What?!" Nino snapped, angry at being pulled away from the gift of his sister.

"I've lost them!" Sho nearly snarled. "All three of them! Their coms are dead and I didn't get a black-out warning from them!"

Nino froze.

"Well," he said. "That's not good."

Understatement of the century, Ninomiya.


End file.
